Help! My iPad memory is full

You may think that 32 or 64 GB of memory is enough for your tablet use. And that is often the case. But all the apps on the tablet take up memory space, just like the photos, videos and newspapers stored on the device. The iPad can still become full at some point. Then it’s time to clean up the device and free up memory space. You can take the following steps:

1. Find out which apps are taking up the most memory.
2. Remove the apps you don’t use.
3. Remove content from apps.
4. Move photos and videos to a computer.

In this article we discuss these steps for the iPad with the operating system iOS 12 or higher.

On the iPad, you can find out how much memory space your apps are using. To do this, do the following:

• Tap on Institutions > General.
• Tap on iPad storage.
• This shows how much storage space is still available on the tablet and how much is in use. It also shows a list of apps and the amount of memory they are using. The apps at the top use the most memory space.

With this knowledge, you can make a decision and delete the apps that are taking up too much space. But what if those are exactly the apps you love to use? For example, only remove the apps that you never or rarely use. Also keep in mind that sometimes it seems that an app takes up a lot of space, while the problem lies with the amount of information in the app (for example, books in Books). So it is not always necessary to remove an app (more on that in the next paragraph).

• Under iPad storage, tap the app you want to delete to free up space.
• A screen will open with more information about the app. Tap on Delete app to uninstall the app.
• Tap again Delete app to confirm your choice.

You return to the overview. The available memory space has been updated.

As just written, some apps take up a lot of space because there is a lot stored in the app. Think of e-books in the Books app or digital newspapers in apps such as De Volkskrant. Newspapers, for example, keep the digital newspapers for a few days or even all of them. They take up memory space. The Podcasts app is also a notorious one: all listening downloads take up space.

Clean up these types of apps by deleting their content. Do that in the app itself. For example, throw away the e-books, newspapers, or downloaded radio episodes. Cleaning works slightly differently with each app. Unfortunately, we cannot explain how to do it for every app. But to give you an idea, let’s see how it works in Books.

Remove book from Books
Ebooks don’t take up much space, just a few MB. So only delete books if you really don’t want to read them anymore.

• Open the Books app by tapping it.
• Tap on Library.
• Tap on the right Change.
• Tap the book you want to delete.
• Tap a trash can icon.
• Tap on Remove from ‘I’m reading now’ or Delete download.

For many people, the photos take up a lot of memory. The obvious thing to do is to delete the photos that you no longer want because they failed, for example. After that, you can back up the other photos to your computer and then delete them from your iPad, or you can store your photos in iCloud. More about this in step 5.

To delete photos:

• Tap the app photos and then the tab photos.
• Tap at the top of the screen Select.
• Tap the photos you don’t want to keep.
• A checkmark will appear at the bottom right of the photos you tapped. Tap the trash can icon.
• Tap the notification Remove X parts or Delete X photos (where X is the number of photos and/or videos).

On iPad, deleted photos remain in the Recently Deleted folder for 30 days. The photos in this folder also take up space on your iPad. However, it is possible to delete the photos from this folder as well. Tap the tab Albums or open the left sidebar. Tap on Recently deleted. Tap on Select > clear all > Remove X parts or Delete X photos.

A convenient way of saving photos is to copy them to the computer. You keep them in a safe place while you relieve the memory of your iPad. Learn how to do this in the “Transfer Photos from iPad to Computer” article. Once all the photos have been copied to the computer, you can delete them from the iPad. You can read how to do this in the previous paragraph.

Another option is to use iCloud. Then the original photos and videos are kept on Apple’s servers and take up less space on the iPad. Learn more in the “Working with iCloud Photos on iPhone or iPad” article.