IPhone Overloaded? Try These 6 Smart Ways to Declutter Your Device (For Education Uses)

Unfortunately, it is not possible to upgrade the internal storage of an iPhone. However, there is no need to worry as there are ways to manage and optimize the available storage on your iPhone.

There are a number of ways to clear storage on the iPhone, and it can also be expanded with iCloud or an external hard drive. You may even back up iPhone directly to external hard drive or iCloud as a precaution, which is an additional bonus.

For this article, however,  we will focus on the option to clear storage directly on the smartphone because on 90% of devices, you can free up tens of gigabytes of memory with relatively little effort.

How to Free Up Memory on iPhone?

#1 Work Through Apps You Don't Use

To free up space on your device, you can delete unused apps. Simply go to the device storage page, find the apps you don't use, and tap on them. Then select "Delete App." Don't worry, if you ever want to use a deleted app again, you can always re-download it from the App Store without any extra charge.

If you'd like to temporarily disable an app without losing its settings, you can choose to offload it. This is useful when you need to make space for installing an iOS update. To offload an app, locate it on the storage list, tap on it, and select "Offload App." The app will remain on your home screen, and you can easily re-download it by tapping on it.

You can even set up automatic removal of apps that you don't use often. Simply go to Settings > App Store > Offload Unused Apps and toggle it on.

#2 Remove Unwanted Music

Multimedia, like audio tracks and videos, consumes a considerable amount of storage space. There are two ways to remove audio files and videos using Apple's own Music app/service.

First, navigate to Settings > General > [device] Storage > Music. At the end, you will find a summary of all the music stored on your phone. Swipe left to delete albums or tracks that you no longer listen to. You can also use the Edit button to swiftly remove multiple tracks and albums.

Alternatively, open the Music app and go to Library > Downloaded. Here, you will find locally stored music that occupies space. To delete an entire album, press and hold on it, and a pop-up menu will appear with a Delete from Library option. Likewise, you can delete specific songs within an album by tapping the three-dot menu and selecting Remove.

#3 Start Smart Cleaning

With the introduction of artificial intelligence in applications, the concept of smart cleaning has appeared. For example, the CleanUp app can automatically search the device's memory for data that applications generate but are of no value to the user. If you want to clean up more memory on your device with this app, then go to the app in the App Store. After launching the application, it will find duplicate files, cached photos, downloaded pictures, browser cookies, and other garbage. This is a unique opportunity to boost your phone and not lose your personal photos and videos.

#4 Empty Your Browser's Cache

If your iPhone or iPad has some unnecessary clutter, you should consider clearing the cache for Safari or other mobile web browsers you use. To clear the cache in Safari, follow these steps: Go to Settings, then tap on Safari. From there, you can tap on Clear History and Website Data. For Chrome on iOS, open the app, tap on the three dots located at the bottom-right corner, and select History. You can then choose to either Clear Browsing Data and remove everything or tap on Edit to delete specific websites. Another option is to navigate to Settings, then Privacy, and select Clear Browsing Data. This option allows you to delete browsing history, cookies, site data, cached images, and files, saved passwords, and autofill data - you can also clear everything at once. For a more detailed guide, you can read How to Clear Your Cache on Any Browser.

#5 Delete Text Messages

As mentioned earlier, you have the option to automatically delete conversations from the Messages app, which can save a significant amount of storage. However, you might not want to do that if there are messages you want to keep for sentimental reasons. You can still delete a large number of messages from your phone while preserving the ones you don't want to lose. To delete a message, simply swipe from right to left on it. Then, choose the "Delete" option. A better approach for filtering out messages that are safe to delete, and subsequently deleting them in bulk, is to filter your messages by Unknown Senders.

1. Click on "Unknown Senders."
2. Within the Unknown Senders view, tap on the three dots at the top.
3. Select the messages you want to delete.
4. Tap on "Select all" to choose all messages.
5. Double-check to ensure you aren't deleting anything important, and deselect those messages if necessary.
6. Finally, tap "Delete" to remove the selected messages.

#6 Delete Attachments

Texting is more than just sending and receiving messages, isn't it? You get to exchange memes, GIFs, selfies, and even videos of your cat's adorable mishaps. All this content gets stored on your iPhone, whether you save it to Photos or not. If you're an enthusiastic texter, it can quickly take up valuable space. Now, if you want to free up some memory on your iPhone by deleting all your message attachments, here's what you need to do:

1. Go to Settings and tap on General.
2. From there, select iPhone Storage.
3. Scroll down until you find Messages and tap on it.
4. You'll see a list of different categories like Top Conversations, Photos, GIFs and Stickers, and Others. Choose the category that is taking up the most space. Remember, if you go for Top Conversations, you'll be deleting entire threads, not just the attachments. If you prefer to keep the conversations intact, focus on Photos and other content.
5. In the upper-right corner, tap on Edit.
6. Mark all the attachments you want to delete.
7. Finally, tap on the Trash icon to complete the deletion process.

Conclusion

We really hope that our tips can assist you in liberating some of the storage space on your iPhone or iPad! As you've surely noticed, there are numerous ways to tidy up the memory of your devices without compromising any significant data. The most effective approach involves using a combination of methods, like deleting message attachments and offloading apps.