Get ready to bid farewell to those annoying "almost full" memory notifications.

How to free up space on your iPhone in 3 simple steps. Photo credit: Cup of Couple via Pexels

Checking Your iPhone's Storage Space

Let's start with the basics: before we can optimise the space on your iPhone, it's useful to know how much memory is actually free and how much is used up. To find out, follow these steps:

Settings > General > iPhone Storage

Here, you'll find a list of installed apps in order of size, along with various content and files on your device, along with their respective space consumption.

In the same section, you'll find the "Recommendations" feature, where Apple gives you the option to automatically remove unused apps without losing related data and documents.

Freeing Up Storage Space on Your iPhone

Now that we have an overview of what takes up the most memory on your smartphone, we can finally proceed with these 3 simple steps to gain more space on your iPhone.

1. Clear the Cache

One of the easiest and quickest methods to free up memory on our iPhones is to delete browsing data from browsers and applications. Over time, without realising it, we accumulate temporary data (such as images, videos, or cookies) that can invade our memory and slow down the performance of our smartphones.

To clear the cache and reclaim space, simply follow these steps.

If you use Safari to browse the internet:

• Go to Settings > Safari
• Tap on Clear Website Data and History.

Easy, right?

If you use Google Chrome for your browsing:

• Open the Chrome app
• Tap on the three vertical dots in the upper right corner
• Select Settings
• Go to History
• Tap on Clear Browsing Data

There you have it! Now remember to perform this process periodically to keep your iPhone's memory free. If you like, you can perform the same cache removal process on other installed apps on your device.

2. Store Photos and Videos on iCloud

An excellent strategy to ensure that you always have enough available space on your iPhone without having to delete your personal files is to use a cloud service.

If you want to use Apple's native storage service, namely iCloud, you can sync your phone directly from your settings so that the upload happens automatically.

To do this:

• Go to Settings
• Tap on your Apple ID
• Tap on iCloud
• Tap on iCloud Backup and ensure that the "Back Up Now" option is enabled.

In addition to freeing up space, iCloud offers the advantage of securely storing your data and making it accessible from anywhere in case of need (for example, if you want to back up or access it from other devices).

The good news? Apple offers 5 GB of free storage space to its users. However, to expand your memory further, you'll need to activate a paid plan (there are different plans available depending on your needs). To learn more, visit the official Apple website.

If you prefer not to use an iCloud plan, we can recommend alternative file storage services like Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox.

3. Remove Unnecessary Files from Messaging Apps

In addition to the previously mentioned strategies, another useful method to free up space on your iPhone is to "clean up" your messaging apps, including popular ones like Whatsapp, Telegram, or Messages.

Depending on the application, there are various tricks to optimise storage space. Let's see how.

Let's start with Whatsapp. To reclaim memory, open the app and:

• Go to Settings
• Tap on Storage and Data > Manage Storage
• Tap on Items larger than 5 MB or select a specific chat to see saved items and remove heavier ones that you no longer need.

Another trick to optimise storage space in your Whatsapp chats is to use the "Enable Disappearing Messages" feature. With this option, you'll have more privacy and fewer memory issues.

To free up space in Telegram, you can quickly remove media by clearing the cache. Open the app and:

• Go to Settings
• Tap on Data and Storage > Storage Usage
• Select the items you want to clear from the cache, such as Stickers and Emojis, Stories, or Videos.
• Tap on Clear Cache.

To better manage the storage space occupied by Telegram, we also recommend setting the options to "Auto-delete media from cache" to determine the period within which you want data to be removed.

One last tip is to disable automatic file downloads in the Messages app so that the numerous shared files from the channels you follow don't take up too much space on your iPhone. You can find the setting in the same Data and Storage section of the app.

Finally, let's see how to optimize space in the Apple Messages app.

First:

• Go to Settings > Messages
• Scroll down and you'll find under the Message History section: Keep Messages
• This is set to "Forever" by default, but this will quickly fill up your iPhone's memory. Therefore, we suggest selecting the "30 Days" option, which will automatically delete messages (and their contents) after one month from receiving or sending.

Lastly, you can choose to save even more space in the Messages app by enabling the "Low-Quality Image" option: all photos downloaded to your iPhone will have a lower resolution than the original and will take up less space in your overall iPhone memory.