How to free up space and keep your Apple iPhone clutter free

Want to free up space on your cluttered iPhone? Duplicate pictures, unwanted screenshots, old videos, unused applications, and other kinds of memory-clogging data can quickly exhaust your Apple smartphone's storage, leading to a lack of both organization and free space. Luckily, it's easy to get rid of this clutter, provided you have some time to spare.

Most modern iPhones come with at least 128GB storage, reducing the chances of storage exhaustion by a fraction. However, many users with older models are stuck with 64GB, which can be consumed pretty quickly. In fact, even 128GB can be an inadequate storage tier for those who prefer downloading multiple apps and indulging in mobile photography.

To help users free up their iPhone’s storage, the next section will feature a few ways to declutter an iOS smartphone and slow down storage consumption. These will also help optimize the Apple device, and users may see an immediate improvement in performance.

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Here are the best ways to free up space and reduce clutter on your Apple iPhone

To check the storage situation on your iPhone, open the Settings app and navigate to General > iPhone Storage. You’ll see an elaborate graph of how the device’s space is being used by various applications, the operating system, photos, messages, and system data. The best part is that you can check how much space each app is using.

If your phone is approaching its storage limit, Apple iOS will send you a notification stating the same. Furthermore, the Storage section in the Settings will recommend some ways to optimize your storage. You can try the iOS’s suggested techniques or the following methods to free up space.

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Get rid of unused applications

Applications can easily clutter an iPhone's storage. It's important to remove the ones you do not use from your Apple device, especially if its maximum storage limit is on the lower side.

To delete an application, tap and hold its icon and then tap on Delete App. This will remove it and other related files from your device. You can also offload an application, which will passively remove the app from your phone.

Offloading will delete it but keep related files so that you can download it later and continue from where you left off. It’s a great way to free up space if you use an application occasionally. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and tap on the app you wish to offload. Tap on Offload App to remove it from your device.

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Filter your device’s media library

Media files take up a lot of space and most of them remain unaccessed for months and sometimes even years. Whether you want to use a third-party media declutter service or do so manually, it’s extremely important to filter your device’s media library and then remove duplicates and unwanted files, like screenshots and notes.

If you are a photography or videography enthusiast and have thousands of media files on your device, it’s recommended to upload them either to a cloud service (iCloud or Google Photos) or to your computer. You can then delete the original files from your phone and free up space.

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Set messages to delete automatically after 30 days

Messages can take up considerable space on your Apple device. To tackle this, you can set your device to automatically delete received messages after 30 days. Go to Settings > Messages and scroll down to Message History. Tap on Keep Messages and change the option to 30 days.

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Delete downloaded content

Downloaded media for offline use (YouTube, Netflix) can clutter the storage space of your Apple smartphone. Make sure to delete such content from time to time. You can go to the application's offline library to access the list of downloaded files and delete them.

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Lastly, iPhone users can also clear browser data (Safari or Google Chrome) and cache for a noticeable speed boost in internet browsing and remove clutter. Cache files and browsing data may not take up much of your storage space, but deleting such them will definitely help optimize your smartphone’s overall performance.