How to Free up space on your iPhone & iPad

Are you tired of not having enough space on your iPhone or iPad to take pictures or download apps? Does you iPhone or iPad scream at you “NOT ENOUGH SPACE” when you try to update the iOS or take a video?

Megabite is here to help!

Would you like to know what’s the best way to move files to free up space, or what to keep or delete? Follow these few easy steps and soon your iPhone or iPad will seem like new.

1. Check Your Total Usage

Go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage.
At the very top, under STORAGE, you will see Used and Available space. These fields tell you how much space you have used on your iPhone or iPad, and how much space you have left.

You should have at least 1GB of Available space so you can take new pictures and install new apps without having your equipment screaming at you, “sorry not enough space.”

2. How to Analyze Which Apps Are Using the Most Space

Tap on Manage Storage. Here you will see a list of all your apps, in the order of space used. Each app has a page that shows the usage. The first number is the amount of space the app itself uses. This number is in light gray. The second number is the space that is being used by the app’s data and documents.

This information is helpful in determining the amount of space used by the app itself and the amount used by the data you have already downloaded using this app. For example, if you like to watch podcasts and have an app for that purpose, the following options on how to view and save podcasts are:
– Choose to save and listen to the podcasts later and delete the file after listening.
– Download the podcasts only when you want to play them and delete immediately after viewing.
– Choose to stream podcasts with a video component and never download them.

3. How to Check Your Photo and Video Use
The Photos & Camera app takes up a lot more space than you think.
When you tap on that app to see how much space it uses, (follow the instructions above) you’ll see both Photo Library and Shared Photo Stream.
Let’s just focus on Photo Library right now, this is the space being used locally on your iPhone or iPad.
If you have more than 1GB of pictures or videos on your devices you really should copy them to another storage space such as iCloud photo library and delete them from your iPhone or iPad. This will free up a ton of space. Apple has four different plans you can choose from. The free plan gives you 5GB of storage. If you need more storage space, you can purchase 50GB of space for S.99 cents a month, 200GB of for $2.99 a month or 1TB for $9.99 a month. Most people will only need the 5GB, however, if you take tons of pictures with your iPhone or iPad you might need 50GB or 200GB of storage space.
To enable iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone or iPad just simply follow these few steps.

a. Launch the Settings on your iPhone or iPad .
b. Tap on iCloud.
c. Tap on Photos.
d. Turn On the option for iCloud Photo Library at the top. Voila, you are now ready to upload your photos to the iCloud photo library.

4. What Other Files Can be Deleted?
Files from other apps that you can delete include music players, voice memos, and office apps. Always check to see if you still need the files stored in these apps. You might be surprised how much data you can delete.

5. Delete Apps You Don’t Use.
There are two ways to delete apps you no longer want or use.
– The first way is to go to the Manage Storage page. Scroll through the list of apps and look for apps you don’t use, then highlight and choose Delete.
– The other way is to delete the apps from the homepage by pressing and holding down on any app until the apps start dancing and an x appears over the apps. Then simply tap on the x on each app you want to delete and confirm deletion. When you are done, press the home button and the apps turn steady again. It’s that simple.

6. Remove Unwanted Music Tracks and Albums
Multimedia, such as audio tracks and videos use a lot of space. There are two ways to delete audio files and videos.
From Settings go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage.

Scroll to the Music app and tap it. The next screen shows all the songs and albums you have stored locally on your device.
– You can delete all the tracks you don’t want by swiping it right to left.
– You can also use the Edit button on the top right to delete multiple tracks and albums all at once.
– From within the App, select Music and go to Artists > Only Downloaded Music. Toggle that button on. Now, you will only see music that is stored locally and taking up space.

7. Empty Safari’s Cache
By just simply emptying Safari’s cache you can also add space to your device.
– Go to Settings > Safari. Tap Clear History and Website Data.
Now that you have lots of space and your device will not be screaming at you anytime soon and you can become friends once again.

Karen Beth

Here is another helpful blog from The Porch. The ultimate guide on how to restore your laptop