7 Easy Ways to Free Space On Your iPhone

It’s happened to the best of us. iPhone out, ready to take the perfect Instagram photo or selfie when suddenly a gray text box appears on the screen: “There is not enough available storage to take a photo. You can manage your storage in settings.” That message is the bane of many iOS users’ existence, leading to harried mass deletions of photos and apps just to make room.

Things are sure get worse in the coming weeks as Apple releases their latest operating system, iOS 10, which will once again leave many users scrambling to free up space on their phones.

It doesn’t have to be that way though. Here are 7 simple tips that any iPhone owner can use to keep their device running with enough free space for anything they may need.

1. Delete Unused Apps: The quickest and easiest way to make a major dent in how much memory you’re using is to delete apps you no longer use, many of which you may not even remember downloading. Simply go into the manage storage tab, see what apps are taking up the most space, and get rid of any that have gone unused lately.
2. Disable Automatic App Updates: Staying on the subject of apps, make sure to have automatic updates turned off. This will save you battery life, use less data, and allow you to see if the apps available are personally worth updating.
3. Delete Old Text Messages: In the same vain as apps, text messages take up a great deal of space. Go through your texts and delete any messages that you don’t need to hold on to (which honestly is probably a majority of them). If you were okay doing that, a smart next step would be heading into settings, then messages, and setting your phone to continuously delete messages older than thirty days.
4. Don’t Use My Photo Stream: If you don’t want your photos saved to every one of your Apple devices at the same time, there’s really no need for this feature to be enabled and taking up room on your phone.
5. Only Save One Photo In HDR Mode: High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode allows your camera to take multiple photos, and then combine them to produce the best quality shot. If using it, make sure that the Keep Normal Photo feature is turned off as there’s honestly no reason to save low quality versions of your photos in your iPhone’s memory.
6. Clear Your Cache: Whether you use Safari, Chrome, or a different mobile browser, clearing out your history and cookies will certainly free up some space.
7. Rent an iTunes Movie with a Large File Size: If all else fails and you need some space quickly, try renting a movie that’s too big to fit on your phone. The download will fail, but the attempt should clear up space on your phone, at least according to a viral Reddit thread.