- Since most iPhone users don't stray too far from iOS,
when they upgrade from their iPhone,
it's typically to a new iPhone.
Now when they do this things like photos,
app data,
contacts,
everything is transferred directly
to the new phone via iTunes.
Now combine that with the fact that
when these users buy a new iPhone,
they don't generally get the larger storage size.
They keep with the same storage size they had,
and you can see how over time,
that's a pretty good formula for running out of space.
Since it's one of the biggest things
that my friends and family ask me help with,
I figured I would do a quick video
to show you how you can free up storage
and space on your iPhone,
and not only that,
but also some little tricks and apps that can help you
never have to worry about it again.
So first up we shouldn't go into this blindly right?
So.
Thankfully,
iOS actually has a feature within it that can show you
who the largest culprits of storage are.
To get to it,
go to Settings,
General,
Storage & iCloud Usage,
and then click Manage Storage under Storage.
From here you'll see a list of all of the apps
that are taking up the most storage on your device
in size order from the largest at the top,
all the way down to the smallest at the bottom.
Chances are if you did that check,
Photos is probably somewhere near the top,
and probably by far.
So now what we're going to do
is we're going to use an app called Google Photos
to upload all of the photos that are on your phone
and your videos,
and then automatically do so from now on.
When that happens,
we're going to delete all of your camera roll photos,
therefore saving you a crap-ton of storage on your phone.
Now you may be wondering,
"How do I still see all of those photos?".
The Google Photos app actually allows you to view them
without them taking up storage space,
so long as you the Google Photos app
instead of your regular photos app.
And then if you want to share them or anything else,
it just downloads them as needed,
again saving a lot of storage.
To use this we're gonna head to the App Store
and search for and install Google Photos.
Open it once it's installed
and then log in or sign up.
Keep in mind that this is free
and also it will allow you to back up unlimited photos,
so long they're at a certain quality.
But trust me,
that quality is much higher
than most photo-sharing services will ever need.
Then click Settings,
and select to automatically back up your photos,
or just select it when prompted during the setup process.
Now connect to a Wi-Fi network at this point
to speed up the process.
And this will also make sure
that it uploads your videos as well.
Tap the menu icon at the top left,
then tap on Assistant
and just make sure that you see it backing up.
At this point you can just
wait,
because it's going to take a while.
Once it says it is done,
type in photos.google.com into your browser,
log in with the same Google account
that you used to log into the app on the phone with,
and then just kinda go through it and make sure
that it looks like it grabbed all of your photos and videos.
So next up we're going to get rid of the photos
in the camera roll.
Again please make sure
that you've done another back up of your photos,
not just the Google Photos,
just in case.
Now unfortunately,
iOS doesn't have a way to do this
without literally tapping each one individually
and deleting them that way.
But the Google Photos app since it,
just knows that this probably what you're doing with it,
apparently,
has a way to do it for you.
So just re-open the Google Photos app,
tap the menu icon at the top left,
then tap Settings,
under free up device storage tap Free Up Space
and follow the prompts to finish the job.
From then on you'll have
all of that storage reclaimed,
and again you can just go into the Google Photos app
to check out all of your photos from the past.
So the next app,
you probably wouldn't think of
as one that would be taking up a lot of storage.
But because iOS saves all of your photos,
and all of your conversations in the Messaging app,
messages can actually be a huge storage hog.
Now by default,
iOS actually saves all of your messages indefinitely.
Literally says the word,
forever,
in there.
So,
since you probably don't need it forever,
we're gonna change that to the lowest it can be,
which is 30 days.
To do that head to Settings,
Messages,
and then under Message History tap Keep Messages,
and change it from Forever to 30 days.
The next biggie for most people is Music.
So the truth is that you don't really need
your entire library of 10,000 songs
on your phone at all times.
I mean you're only gonna listen to a small portion of that,
if we're honest,
and chances are you probably have Wi-Fi,
or at least Data Connectivity most places you go.
So a really good solution to save a lot of space,
is to use some type of streaming service.
Now there are a bunch of them out there.
I personally use Spotify,
it's $10 a month for the service.
It allows you to search for basically any song,
and you can play that right away
in case you have a craving for a song,
otherwise you just tap Save to Device
and it'll actually download specific songs
in case you wanna use them and have them at all times,
or if you live in a city
that has a subway system for example.
So what if you have your own music library
on your phone or your computer,
say from Cds or wherever else you got them from,
Spotify wouldn't be a great solution,
neither would most of the other streaming services.
But Apple actually has their own streaming add-on for iTunes
called iTunes Match.
Now essentially what this allows you to do,
is it allows you to upload all of your music,
whether it's from iTunes or not up to iCloud through iTunes,
and then stream that music directly to any of your iDevices,
and also save them to your device,
all that similar stuff that I mentioned with Spotify.
So if you're interested in doing that,
you can set it up by going on the phone to Settings,
Music,
Subscribe to iTunes Match.
Then on your computer you're gonna download and open iTunes,
and then you can add your music to the library in iTunes
and have it upload to iCloud.
And there you go,
that probably covers the biggest ones,
and probably has already stopped you from getting
that warning that you are running out of space,
which is what prompted you
to find this video in the first place.
Now if you do want other ways of saving
even more storage on your phone,
I actually wrote them all out in the article for this video,
so click the link below to be taken to my site
where you can see all of that.
If there are other ways you guys know to free up storage,
please leave them in the comments below.
Always love to see them,
and they'll help other people as well.
If you enjoyed this video,
please thumbs-up it or share it,
it is greatly appreciated,
and if you want more videos like this,
please subscribe to the YouTube channel.
Also reach out to me on Twitter @theunlockr
with the e missing in the word unlocker.
And as always,
thanks for watching.