How to Free Up Storage on Your iPhone

Before deleting anything, open Settings, tap General, then iPhone Storage. After a short wait you will see a coloured bar and a list of apps sorted by size. This screen is the honest answer to “where did my storage go?”, and it stops you wasting an afternoon on things that barely matter.

For most people the biggest items are Photos, Messages and a few large apps. Menu names can differ slightly between versions of iOS, but the storage screen is always in the same general area of Settings.

A photo library grows quietly. Burst shots, near-identical retakes, screenshots you only needed for a minute and long videos all add up. Start with videos, because a single long clip can take as much room as hundreds of photos. Then look at screenshots, duplicates and blurry shots.

Our photo cleaner can do the sorting for you. You choose photos, it groups similar ones, scores blurry shots and lists screenshots, and you decide what to remove. Everything is analysed inside your browser, so your pictures are not uploaded anywhere.

When you delete a photo on an iPhone it goes to a Recently Deleted album first and stays there for a while before it is removed for good. The space only comes back once that album is emptied. After you are happy with your clean-up, open Photos, go to Albums, then Recently Deleted, and choose Delete All.

In the iPhone Storage list, tap Messages to see photos, videos and attachments that have built up in conversations. Large attachments can be reviewed and removed without deleting whole chats. Apps you rarely use can be offloaded: this removes the app but keeps its data, so it is back as you left it if you reinstall.

Work from biggest to smallest: large videos first, then duplicates and similar shots, then screenshots, then unused apps, then Messages attachments. Back up anything precious before you delete, and finish by emptying Recently Deleted. Revisit the storage screen once a month and the job stays small.