If you find yourself running out of storage space on your smartphone, we don’t blame you. As smartphone cameras and processors get more powerful, the size of the apps and media files is rapidly increasing too. A single 4K video can easily occupy hundreds of megabytes worth of storage on your device. This is why you’ll see smartphone variants with up to 1TB of storage space these days. Apart from having access to higher storage, there are a few other things you can do to manage the storage capacity of your device. In this article, we bring you the top 8 ways to free up space on your iPhone and Android phone.
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Clear the cache
Clearing the cache memory on your device can help you free up a significant chunk of space. The web browser and apps store temporary files in the cache memory to speed up the load time. Individually delete the cache of each app to increase the available storage on your smartphone. Here’s how.
Clear cache on Android
Step 1: Go to Settings and select Apps.
Step 2: Scroll down and select an app.
Step 3: Tap on Storage.
Step 4: Select ‘Clear cache’.
Clear browser cache on iPhone
Step 1: Go to Settings and select Safari.
Step 2: Select ‘Clear history and website data’.
The browser cache will be cleared.
Clear app data
Have you ever wondered why the size of a particular app rises dramatically over a period of time? This is because the apps on your smartphone store a lot of personal data like account information, database, files, and preference settings. If you don’t use an app all that much, you may want to cleat its data to save some storage space. Here’s how.
Step 1: Go to Settings and select Apps.
Step 2: Select the app from which you want the data cleared.
Step 3: Tap on Storage.
Step 4: Select ‘Clear data’ at the bottom.
Free up space using the Files app on Android
Android’s native Google Files app has a clean-up tool that can help you remove redundant and old data on your device. Here’s how you can free up storage space using the Files app.
Step 1: Launch the Files app and tap on the ‘Clean’ tab.
Step 2: Go through the cleaning suggestions. Delete duplicate images and old apps on your device.
Step 3: Tap on ‘Select files’ under a particular category to choose which files you want to delete.
Step 4: Tap on ‘Move to bin’ to clear the file and free up space.
Delete unused apps on your device
There’s no point in keeping apps that you hardly ever use. Deleting an app can help you recover some much-needed space on your device’s storage. Here’s how you can delete unused apps on your device.
Delete unused apps on Android
Step 1: Go to Google Play Store and tap on your profile icon at the top right corner of the screen.
Step 2: Select ‘Manage apps and device’.
Step 3: Switch to the ‘Manage’ tab.
Step 4: Tap on the filer options and select ‘Least Used’.
Step 5: Mark the apps you want to remove and tap the delete icon at the top right corner of the screen.
Offload unused apps on iPhone
iPhone’s ‘Offload unused apps’ feature routinely checks your phone for inactive apps and deletes them from the system. You will still see the app icon on your home screen, but it will need to be downloaded before you can use it. You can check how much space you can save by offloading apps by going to Settings>General>iPhone Storage and checking the ‘Recommended’ section. Here’s how you can enable app offloading on your iPhone.
Step 1: Go to Settings and select App Store.
Step 2: Turn the toggle bar on for ‘Offload Unused Apps’.
Create a backup of your media
For most smartphone users, photos and videos take up most of the storage space on their devices. Your smartphone camera can capture a lot of detail in the images and videos it shoots. While the output may be great, even a regular image can take up to 5MB of storage space. Videos can take up more space depending on their resolution and duration.
It is a good idea to create a backup of the media on your device and delete the older images and videos that you don’t view frequently. You can back up your data using a cloud service like iCloud and Google Drive or create a local backup on a memory card or an external hard drive.
Optimize photo storage on your iPhone
While most users are on board with creating a backup of media files, they still don’t want to part with the images and videos on their iPhones. This is understandable as having local access to the media is very convenient and one of the reasons why people enjoy using smartphones in the first place. But what if you could back up images to the cloud while also accessing a version of the image that doesn’t take up much space on your phone? Well, your iPhone can do precisely that. Here’s how you can optimise photo storage on your iPhone.
Step 1: Go to Settings and select Photos.
Step 2: Under iCloud, select the option to optimise iPhone storage.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I free up space on my phone?
The easiest way to free up space on your phone is by deleting duplicate files and unused apps.
Why is my phone storage always full?
Your phone’s storage can fill up over a period of time. This is because the apps on your device are always accumulating data. Clear app data to restore storage space.
How do I clear space on my phone without losing data?
Delete redundant and duplicate files from your phone. Back up large files to cloud storage and remove them from your device.
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Conclusion
These are the top 8 ways you can free up storage space on your iPhone and Android phone. It is a good idea to view the full breakdown of storage space on your device in order to gauge its storage status. Routinely clear the cache and redundant files on your device to manage its memory.
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