Over time, the storage of your Apple devices becomes more and more full. With photos and videos, apps you may or may not use anymore, downloads, you name it. It is therefore advisable to occasionally sweep the broom, so that new things fit on it. If you want to free up space on your iPhone or iPad, read on.
Remove iOS apps (optionally automatically)
To know whether you need to clean your device, first check how much space is being used on your iPhone or iPad. To do that, tap Settings and choose General / iPhone Storage for iPhone orf iPad storage for iPad. At the top you can see how much space is currently being used. Directly below you will find the option Clean up apps. This will automatically clean up unused apps when the storage space is getting full. Tap on Switch on.
Next, take a look at the list of apps. With each app you can read how much space it takes up. Tap an app to see the details: this often shows not only how much space the app itself is taking up, but also how much space is used by documents and other data.
Tap the button Clean up to uninstall the app but keep the documents and the like. As soon as you install the app again later, the data will be used again. If you never have to use the app again, you can also delete the associated data and documents. Then tap Delete app.
After you’ve set up the iPhone or iPad to automatically clean up unused apps, it’s not a bad idea to check yourself what you no longer use. You can simply delete unused apps, and that also applies to paid apps.
If you need the latter category of apps in the future, you can download them free of charge from the Apple Store.
Delete files and downloads
Did you clean up the apps? Then open the app Files and check whether the various folders contain files that you no longer need. A good example of this is the map Downloads. This is often a repository of files that you never view again. Then we check the browser. Decide whether you want to keep the history and other data from the past time or whether it can be deleted. We start from Apple’s default browser, Safari. Tap on Settings / Safari. Now tap the button Clear history and website data.
If you use Google Chrome, open the browser and press the button with the three dots. Choose forr History and tap Clear browsing history. You can then indicate which parts may be removed. If you use Microsoft Edge, tap the three dots in the browser and choose Settings / Privacy & Security. Tap on Clear browsing data.
Media files (such as photos, videos, and music) always take up a lot of space. Do you use the Music app? Then open it and view the overview of the locally saved albums. Press an album until the submenu appears and then choose Remove from library to delete a that album. Do you want to delete all local (downloaded) music? You do that through the Settings. Choose that Music and search on the right side of the screen for Downloaded music. Tap this and choose Change. Delete the albums you no longer listen to.
Now in the same settings window choose photos. For example, if you no longer want photos to be automatically downloaded to the device, set the slider to Out Bee My Photo Stream. Then open the app photos and delete the albums you no longer need. You don’t necessarily have to keep archived albums on your phone and tablet: you can also use an online storage service such as Dropbox or iCloud.
Once you have completed these steps, many GBs have become available on your iPhone or iPad. Can you fill that storage space with new files and apps!
.