How To Optimize iPhone Storage and Free Up Space In iOS 10

Limited storage space has always been a major issue in the basic iPhone devices. Thanks to the iPhone 7, we won’t have to deal with these storage woes anymore as it comes with a minimum ROM of 32GB and up to 256GB. Lately, Apple also expanded the minimum storage capacity of its iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus from 16GB to 32GB. These two iPhones now come in 32GB and 128GB variants. So, it’s a win win situation for the new iPhone users. But the users with the older iPhone models still have to deal with the storage tribulations.

What to do in that case? Of course, iCloud can help you out a bit. But you can’t be totally dependent on it. After all, you can’t directly store anything on iCloud. Every app that you install in your iPhone will eat some of your storage space and though you can back it up on iCloud, it doesn’t mean you can delete the app from your iPhone and still use it. Once you delete it, you’d no longer have access to it unless you redownload and install it from the iCloud. But that doesn’t make any difference right? Then what to do? Don’t worry! You can still make the most out of your limited 16GB storage space and in this blog, I’ll tell you some effective tips and tricks to optimize the storage space on your iPhone.

 

Also read 7 Hidden Features In iOS 10.

#1 Find Out The Culprit Apps

Before you start optimizing the storage space on your iPhone (iOS 10), it is better to find out which apps are currently taking the maximum space and make an action plan accordingly. To find out, go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage. Doing that would take you to the list of all the apps installed on your iPhone along with the storage space they have consumed. The apps will be arranged in the decreasing order of their memory usage. In this way, you can easily see which app is taking how much space.

#2 Use Google Photos App For Media Storage

Being an iPhone user, you just can’t abstain from photography and eventually your limited storage space can be a major setback. Of course, you can backup your photos on icloud and then remove them from your phone. But what if by any chance, you want to see a photograph that has been backed up and removed or you want to show it to someone but it’s no longer there in your photos gallery. Then you’re left with the only option to retrieve it back from the iCloud. But doing that would definitely take some time, a few minutes at least. Plus, you can’t do that every time you need to find some photograph, can you? I know what you’re thinking, there’s gotta be an easy way. Well actually, there is.

Use Google Photos app instead of the default photo app in your iPhone. Google Photos app is free and gives you unlimited cloud storage. The best part is, you can access all your saved photos instantly. In fact, it’s just as easy as the default photos app. The app automatically backs up photos from your default photos gallery and gives you instant access to your photos. After that, you can delete all the photos from your default photos app. In case, you want to share any photo, you can easily download that photo and then share it wherever you want. The download will only take a few seconds. That way, you can free up a lot of space which can be further used for storing other important data.

#3 Optimize The Music

You must be carrying a lot of music files in your iPhone and that’s probably why the storage space is running out. The music app eats a lot of storage space in case you prefer to download songs from iTunes. Of course, I understand that a lot of people can’t live without music and I’m not telling you to renounce that obsession for music. I’m just telling you to change your ways. So instead of downloading music from iTunes, you can always use streaming apps such as iTunes Radio, Soundcloud, Pandora, Spotify and iMusic. All these apps give you unlimited access to all your favorite tracks. Of course, you need to have a high-speed internet connection for seamless streaming of media and many a times, you can’t have that. Well, don’t worry then. You can always save the music tracks for offline play. The data will be stored in the cache memory and it won’t occupy too much space (much less compared to the ones you download). I personally recommend iMusic for offline play. This stunning app lets you stream and cache the audio as well as video songs for offline play. iMusic is just as easy to use as any other music app even when you’re offline. If at any point, you don’t want to keep some tracks in your playlists, you can easily uncache them and doing that would free some storage space as well.

Now, if you still prefer iTunes and you only want to play the downloaded tracks, there’s still something you can do with your Music app to optimize the storage space. What you can do is, “turn ‘on’ the optimized storage in Music settings.” The Optimized Storage feature in iOS 10 automatically discards those tracks from the library that you haven’t listened to in a while. But don’t worry, the tracks will still be there on the iCloud so you can redownload them any time you want. In this way, it makes room for the new data by dumping some older songs that you don’t usually play. You can also set up a data limit so that it would know when to start deleting the older tracks.

To turn on the optimized storage, go to Settings > Music. Under the downloads section, tap on Optimized Storage and turn it on. That’s it!

#4 App Uninstall Tip

This one is more of a trick rather than a tip. But it can be useful many a times when you desperately need some additional storage space. In the manage storage section, you can see the apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Snapchat eating up a lot of storage space. Usually, you’d see all these apps taking at least 300MB of the total storage space and sometimes even up to 600 or 700MB. That is huge for a single app. In that case, what you can do is, uninstall the app and then install it again and see if that makes any difference. Don’t worry. You won’t lose your account data, it will be restored as soon as you login on the newly installed app. If you are worried about the media, you can always retrieve that from iCloud or Google Photos app if you’re using it. Doing this might free up a significant amount of storage space. However, try it only if you terribly need some additional storage space on your device.

#5 Ditch The Apps That You Don’t Use

Many a times, you have some apps installed in your iPhones that you barely use or don’t use at all. It’s time to say goodbye to those apps. You can backup those apps on iCloud before removing them so that you can easily get them back whenever you want. You can also clean up the apps to wipe out data stored in cache memory. Many apps especially the ones used for streaming store data in cache memory which eventually results in the consumption of a lot of storage space. Launch all these apps and see if there’s any audio/video tracks saved for offline play that you don’t want anymore. Check if you have saved offline videos on YouTube app and remove those videos that you don’t want anymore. Repeat the process on every other streaming app that you have.    

So these were some simple tips and tricks that you can use to free up a lot of storage space on your iPhone. Follow these few tips and you’ll never have to worry about storage space ever in your iPhone.