5 Guaranteed Quick Ways to Free Up Memory on your iPhone

iPhone users, specifically people like me using the 16GB version of the iPhone (Why the heck is Apple still making a 16GB variant!?) would very often encounter memory shortage problem. Not the type of short term memory loss but the kind of where your iPhone would tell you that you do not have sufficient storage left the moment you want to take a photo of a once-in-a-lifetime moment or a video of something amazing beyond words. That has got to be one of the worst moments an iPhone user can experience.

Since I started using the iPhone 6 Plus, my unit is the 16GB version. I would have just around 1-2GB max of space left and I painstakingly proceed to my daily ritual of backing up photos. Otherwise, I risk myself leaving home with few to no extra space left. There are a lot of external storage options available for the iPhone like the Mili iData flash (I haven't tried that yet) or a generic lightning to memory card reader type of device. It just doesn't work for me. Yes, it does the job but it is so slow in transferring files that I rather wait and back up my data using my computer.

Today, I effectively freed up nearly 4GB of storage space from my 16GB unit. The biggest free memory I had considering I still have my apps intact. I listed down the steps that you can do and within 30 minutes, I guarantee that you can free up a lot of space from your iPhone!


1) Safari
First set: Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data

Second set:  Settings > General > Storage & iCloud > Manage storage > Safari > "edit" website data > "remove" offline reading list > delete


2) Mail
Go to settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Delete all accounts you have then put them right back in.

3) iMessage 
Deleting multiple photos from iMessage: Launch messages app > open the message thread of your target person > click details on the upper right > select one of the images by tapping longer > click more > select the images you want to delete > click delete or the trash bin icon.

Automatically delete old messages:
Settings > Messages > scroll down then click "Keep messages" > select either 30 days or 1 year (your choice)

Automatically delete audio and video messages
Settings > Messages > Tap "Expire" under audio messages > select "after 2 minutes"
Settings > Messages > Tap "Expire" under video messages > select "after 2 minutes"



4) Check which apps takes up a lot of space
Settings > General > Storage & iCloud > Manage storage (under storage) > check which apps takes up the most space

Having known the apps that takes up a lot of space, what I did was delete them then I re-installed them right after. It cleared out a lot of storage space used up by those apps. For example, my Facebook app was taking up 600MB of storage space! When I deleted and re-installed it, I have the same Facebook app but now, it only took up 160MB space. Same thing happened with my Instagram app which initially took 350MB. After re-installing, it only took 36MB of space. Amazing, right?

I also deleted Viber and Line which I didn't have a problem reinstalling again because after logging in, all my chat groups were still there but the message thread will be gone. Keep everything first if you have something important in those apps. If there is something really important in those apps, I suggest that you don't delete and re-install.

I hope I helped you free up memory on your 16GB iPhone. This will be my last 16GB iPhone. I'm sure to get the 64 or the 128GB the next time I upgrade. (This is why the new Samsung S7 is very tempting for me!)

Let me know if you know more tips and tricks to free up memory!

Cheftonio
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