How to clear space on your phone (2024)

FAQs

How do I free up space on my iPhone? ›

Open your iPhone's Settings menu, tap General and go to iPhone Storage. You'll see a list of your apps along with how much space each app occupies and the last time you used it. Scroll through the list and try deleting apps that you haven't used in a long time. Get rid of apps you haven't used in a long time.

In the app's Application info menu, tap Storage and then tap Clear Cache to clear the app's cache. To clear cached data from all apps, go to Settings > Storage and tap Cached data to clear the caches of all the apps on your phone.

Sometimes the "Android storage space running out but it's not" issue is caused by the overwhelming amount of data stored on your phone's internal memory. If you have many apps on your Android device and use them simultaneously, cache memory on your phone can be blocked, which leads to Android insufficient storage.

Delete social media app cache

Caches are responsible for using up a lot of the storage space on your iPhone. Some of the biggest culprits are the caches associated with streaming and social media apps.

Check the Recently Deleted Folder

This means that deleted data still exists on your phone—and is synced to iCloud—for some time, despite you having deleted it. People commonly forget to clear this album out since the folder is buried far down in the Photos app.

Clear cache: Deletes temporary data. Some apps can open slower the next time you use them. Clear data storage: Permanently deletes all app data. We recommend trying to delete from inside the app first.

Delete old text messages

You'll be surprised to see how much storage space your text messages take on your smartphone. You may not even realize those messages are being saved to your phone. Don't worry, you can delete them. Be sure to delete messages with photos and videos first — they chew up the most space.

What is taking up my phone storage? ›

On Android™: In Settings, select Battery and device care (may also be Battery Care). Then, tap Storage. From there, you can see what's taking up space on your phone.

You can free up space in your trash by clearing out deleted emails that haven't been permanently deleted yet. Click on Deleted emails. Important: If you don't have any emails in your trash, you won't be able to open the Deleted emails menu.

128GB: enough for the average user

An iPhone with 128GB storage capacity is suitable for the average user. With the new iPhone 12 models, this is the minimum storage capacity. With 128GB, you have enough space to store some photos, music, and videos locally.

You can use Google Photos to save space on your device when you delete photos that are safely backed up. Before you use this feature, you must ensure that you've already backed up your photos properly. Learn how to back up photos.

Empty Android's cached files

If you've deleted all the files you don't need and you're still receiving the “insufficient storage available” error message, you need to clear out Android's cache.

Untouched or unused files are disputable junk files. Unlike most system junk files that are automatically created, untouched or unused files are simply forgotten and take up space. It's good to be aware of these files and delete them from your Android device periodically.

When you use a browser, like Chrome, it saves some information from websites in its cache and cookies. Clearing them fixes certain problems, like loading or formatting issues on sites.

What uses the most storage on your phone? ›

Photos and videos can be some of the most space-hogging items on your phone. Luckily, if you've got an Android phone, you're probably already uploading your photos to Google Photos — and can therefore take them off your phone. First, check to make sure you are backing up your photos to your Google account.

Usually, each record stores the contact name, call duration, and call date. Both Androids and iPhones limit the call history to the most recent records, so this text-only record will not consume a significant amount of your phone's storage.

Yes, it will free space for new important messages, attachments, and files. Deleting old messages will also help keep your inbox clean and organized.

Deleting Emails Lowers Your Carbon Footprint

It takes power to use the internet. It takes an enormous amount of energy for internet providers and email services to continually store all that data. And how is energy and electrical power generated? Unfortunately, still mostly through the use of fossil fuels.

Deleting removes emails from your inbox. It does save up space, but you won't be able to ever again access your emails. This puts you at risk both in financial and legal terms. You won't be able to produce evidence for ediscovery and litigation.

When a file is deleted, the space used on the disk is not reclaimed until the file is truly erased. The trash (recycle bin on Windows) is actually a hidden folder located in each hard drive.

Location: C:\Windows\Temp

The files and folders inside contain info that Windows used at one time, but doesn't need anymore. Instead of cleaning via Disk Cleanup. you can visit this folder and delete its contents manually, if you want. Just press Ctrl + A to select everything inside, then hit Delete.