How To Free Up TONS Of iPhone Storage [2023]

iPhone storage full that's right you spent over a thousand dollars on a new iPhone but you didn't buy enough storage space at this point you have two options buy a more expensive iPhone or watch this video it's a no-brainer we'll explain what's taking up all the storage space on your iPhone and show you how to set yourself up for Success so you never run out of storage space again let's start by taking a look at David's iPhone open the settings app tap General then tap iPhone storage while we wait for this calculation to happen let's talk about what takes up the most space on an iPhone cue the fancy table in order videos photos music games and apps but it's not as simple as going into the photos app and deleting all your photos and videos right photos and videos live in messages mail social media apps and a slew of other places on your iPhone let's start by talking about the biggest storage offenders on most people's iPhones and then work our way back then we'll talk about how to optimize your iPhone for the future so you don't run out of storage space again and if you don't change some settings you probably will on my iPhone photos is taken up by far the most storage space let's talk about iCloud photos just turning on iCloud photos won't save you any storage space at all but there are some settings that you can turn on that will let's head back to the main page of settings tap on your Apple ID at the top of the screen tap iCloud tap photos and turn on the switch next to sync this iPhone you might have iCloud photos in enabled already but let's show you what happened when David turns it on tap sync this iPhone more iCloud storage needed this phone is storing 154 gigabytes of photos and videos you currently have 10.48 gigabytes of iCloud storage available uh-oh at this point you can do one of three things buy more iCloud storage he's not going to do that not going to do that change the things in the photos app or transfer your photos and videos to your computer we'll talk about how to transfer photos and videos to your computer at the end of the video but what if you don't want to take them off your iPhone fortunately there's a lot you can do right in the photos app let's close out of settings open the photos app and scroll down to the media type section let's zoom in a little closer to the fancy chart from the beginning of the video prores videos take up the most storage followed by regular videos then Pro Raw photos then your fancy photos like your live photos and your panoramas followed by just your plain old photos let's start with prores videos you might not have any on your iPhone but fortunately there's an easy way to check if you do underneath media types look for the prores option and tap on that just to give you some idea of how massive these files are I took the 17 minute prores video yesterday if I tap on the information button 99.16 gigabytes that is insanely big it's nearly half of my iPhone storage and if I had one of those 128 gigabyte models it'd be like 75 of my iPhone storage if it's a video you definitely don't need anymore you can delete it but there's a smarter way to manage the videos on your iPhone by trimming out the parts that you don't need the trim your video drag the trimmers on both sides might take a few dries because the buttons are very small and it's word of warning if it's a very long video and you only trim out a little bit it might take a very long time to process the trims but once you're happy with your selection tap done in the lower right hand corner of the screen but wait there's a trick here if you just tap save video you won't actually save any storage space on your iPhone because the photos app is a non-destructive editor which means that it always saves the original so you can go back to it there's a lot of safeguards in here so if you want to actually save storage space you have to save it as a new video and then go back and delete the original so how big is this new clip David new clip if I tap the information button we are down to 2.17 gigabytes whoa we just saved a lot of storage space so let's go back and delete the original yep let's have the information button swipe over to my original video tap the trash can then tap delete video but wait you still haven't saved any storage space to permanently get rid of that file on your iPhone tap back upper left hand corner of the screen back to the main albums page scroll down and tap recently deleted you could could select individual files here but the easiest thing to do is tap select upper right hand corner of the screen then tap delete all in the lower left hand corner of the screen then tap delete it's gone we've actually saved some iPhone storage now after going through your prores video folder tap back to albums upper left hand corner of the screen and then take a look at your videos follow the same steps delete videos you don't need trim ones that you do want to keep next let's talk about Pro Raw photos Pro Raw photos take up a ton of space especially if you're taking the 48 megapixel variety which you can only do in the 14 pro and the iPhone 14 pro Max but let's see if David has any on his phone let's tap back to albums upper left hand corner of the screen and I know you have Pro Raw photos on your iPhone if raw appears under media types tap on that I have 22 photos here to give you some idea of how large these are I'll tap on one tap the information button this one is 57.2 megabytes that's huge for a photo if you want to keep your 48 megapixel photos we built an awesome shortcut that takes them and compresses them down to a manageable size which is something the iPhones of the future will do automatically I'm not quite sure why these don't do it after installing the shortcut which is in the section below the Subscribe button come to your photo and tap the share button lower left hand corner of the screen scroll down to compress image and tap on that got a nice little check mark there and we're done or are we before we delete the originals we should check to make sure that that actually worked let's close out of the share sheet tap back to the main photos page I'm going to scroll up to recents and there is our photo information button it is now six megabytes we just saved a ton of storage space and if you have a lot of Raw photos this is going to help you a lot but we still have to delete the originals yep so let's get out of the information tap back upper left hand corner of the screen back to the main photos app page come down to proraw tap on that photo you just compressed then tap the trash can lower right hand corner of the screen and then you'd have to go back to the recently deleted album and delete it from there too of course but we're not going to do that right now because you already know how to do that next is a super cool new section of the photos app called duplicates which will help you save some iPhone storage space tap back upper left hand corner of the screen back to the main albums page scroll down and tap on duplicates underneath utilities the duplicates functionality works by separating your photos into two different categories the first is merge exact copies which is kind of a no-brainer because they're the same photos the second is just merge items which merges very similar photos which is the one you need to be careful of especially if you're taking a lot of photos of the same subject and you want to be your iPhone will keep one version which combines the highest quality and relevant data you could go one by one but it's easier to merge all your exact copies at the same time so if you tap select in the upper right hand corner of the screen then tap select all and then tap merge at the bottom of the screen we can merge five exact copies only or we can merge seven items if you're not sure start with the exact copies only then go through and check the other ones I'll tap merge five exact copies merge five exact copies if you're enjoying this video please give it a like that tells YouTube you like it which gives us a better chance of being seen by other people and like the navi and Avatar 2 we really appreciate it I see you before we talk about how to stop photos and videos from taking up all of your iPhone storage again let's talk about our next big Defender music let's close out of the photos app open up settings and then scroll down to music then scroll down and tap on downloaded music it's great to be able to download songs but those files can take up a lot of storage space in a hurry especially if you download them in lossless quality you can swipe right to left on an artist to remove those songs from your iPhone as Tab delete and it's gone or if you want to just get rid of all of it at once you can swipe right to left on all songs at the top and hit delete we'll show you how to start other offline content in just a minute but first there are a few Music settings we need to turn on to keep our iPhone storage in check tap back's the Main Music settings page upper left hand corner of the screen one below downloaded music is optimized storage tap on that and turn on the switch at the top of the screen Apple has done a ton to improve this feature in recent years if you want to have some music on your iPhone for when you're traveling but you don't want to have to manage it yourself you can come in here and let your iPhone do it for you this is where you can choose how much music you want to keep on your iPhone before it starts deleting songs 16 gigabytes is a lot of music unless you need to keep music stored locally on your iPhone I recommend just leaving this set to none and turning on the switch like David did at the top of the screen necklace step back to the main music page again then tap on audio quality if you have apple music you'll see lossless audio at the top definitely turn that switch on but can you really hear the difference some people say you can't but they're wrong Law Society was just CD quality audio next let's tap on downloads if you do need to download music for some reason like you're traveling and you want to optimize your storage space choose high quality under downloads if I tap on high quality I'll get this pop-up replaced lossless audio save space by removing lossless downloads so it replaces them with much smaller files which will save you storage space it's a good sacrifice to make I'll tap replace let's tap back to the main Music settings page and then turn off the switch next to automatic downloads we don't want our iPhones automatically downloading anything we want to clear up iPhone storage space not take up more of it let's talk about some other forms of offline content that could be taking up storage space on your iPhone apps like Netflix and Spotify let you download files offline so you can listen to them even when you don't have a Wi-Fi or site Taylor data connection a lot of people do that when they're flying on an airplane because the in-flight entertainment is trash but they also don't remember to go back and clear it out which can take up a lot of iPhone storage space let's head back to the main page of settings scroll up and tap on General then tap on iPhone storage so we're going to pick on Netflix for example I'm going to tap on Netflix currently using almost a gigabyte of data soaring two downloaded videos of Black Mirror to get rid of the swipe right to left on the episode and then tap delete I'll do that for both episodes and save myself a nice gigabyte of storage space next David's going to tap back to the main page of the iPhone storage section look for Amazon music or podcasts or Spotify or any app that you've used to download content and then cleared out speaking of stuff you no longer need let's talk about offloading unused apps offloading an app is different than deleting it because it only saves the documents the data that are personal to you but it deletes the rest of it which it can then later download from the App Store let's head back to the main page of settings scroll down and tap app store and then scroll down and turn on the switch next to offload unused apps I like these set it and forget it Solutions next up delete apps that you no longer use so I'm going to tap back to settings scroll up back to General back to iPhone storage and scroll through your list of apps I think the one of my favorite features in here is the last used date and if you come down here and you find an app you haven't used and say you know six months you just go ahead and tap on that and then tap delete app tap delete next up let's take a look at one of the biggest offenders for iPhone storage space and that's the messages app let's tap back to the main page of settings scroll down and tap messages and then scroll down to keep messages and set this to 30 days but before you do make sure you go into the messages app and save the photos and videos from people you love because after you do this it's going to delete them permanently do you like sending gifts to stickers inside the messages app I do too but jokes on us that actually does take up some iPhone storage space and if you send videos that takes up a whole lot more so if I tap into photos for instance and I see any photos I no longer need I can swipe right to left on that photo and tap delete if we tap back to messages here and tap on gifs and stickers i've just got a bunch of reaction gifs in here that I'd sent and I didn't want them to say to my iPhone though I think it's just one of those things where Apple isn't going to go in and automatically start deleting your text messages I guess that's fair to get rid of these tap edit upper right hand corner of the screen unfortunately there's no select all button so this could be a little bit tedious but if you just go in here and start selecting these uh and tap the trash can they're gone there are also little caches which is a nerdy word for save data hidden in some different parts of your iPhone and one of the biggest offenders is in Safari let's head back to the main page of settings scroll down and tap Safari then scroll down and tap clear history and website data tap clear history and data and then tap close tabs this is a great way to clear the system data on your iPhone I did this for our clear system data on iPhone video and saves a ton of storage space but it's not just Safari individual apps have caches that you can clear as well you could delete and reinstall the app which is kind of tedious unless you only have one or two bad apps fortunately some apps let us clear the caches inside the app Twitter for example is one of those apps so if I close out of settings open up the Twitter app tap on your account icon upper left hand corner of the screen tap settings and support then tap settings and privacy scroll down and tap accessibility display and languages tap data usage tap media storage and tap clear media storage as you just saw clearing out individual app caches can be kind of complicated like David said originally you can just delete and reinstall the app to do the same thing or if we're going too fast for you can join our YouTube channel earlier this week we gave away more than a thousand dollars in prizes to some of our channel members look at that big join button below this video see what you can get with membership next up the on my iPhone section of iPhone storage if it close out of Twitter and go back to the settings app let's go back to the main page of settings scroll down tap General tap iPhone storage easiest way to find it is tapping that search button upper right hand corner of the screen tapping on my iPhone there it is and we'll see a bunch of files saved on our iPhone so right at the top I have four app privacy reports that I really don't need on my iPhone if you see any files in here you don't need it swipe right to left on them then tap delete tap OK let's talk about the best ways to set up your iPhone for long-term storage success deleting a bunch of files you no longer need can save you some storage space in the short term without changing the settings it'll fill up quickly again let's start in the camera section of settings because that's what determines how much space photos and videos actually take up let's head back to the main page of settings scroll down and tap on camera and we're going to start with formats first the difference between high efficiency and most compatible unless you're using a very old computer alongside your iPhone use high efficiency next let's scroll down to the photo capture section out of the box your iPhone takes photos that are compressed meaning the sensor on your iPhone gets a whole lot of data and then does some Ai and machine learning on it to make a great looking photo and gets rid of all the data it doesn't need Apple Pro raw says no I'm just going to keep all of that data for professional photographers the reason they take Raw photos is that they want to be able to do better edits to the photo after the fact next let's talk about prores prores is similar because these files are less compressed than regular video files and that makes them a whole lot bigger one minute of 4K prores video can take up to six gigabytes of storage space I like to think of iPhone storage like a bank account every video photo song costs a little bit so when you choose to record something in higher quality ask yourself is it really worth the cost next let's tap back upper left hand corner of the screen tap on record video and I like how Apple shows us how much each format will use in storage space we want to strike a balance between preserving our photos and videos in really high quality without taking up a ton of unnecessary storage space and filling up your iPhone right away we record our videos in 4k and new TVs are 4K but I don't need to record 4K 60 frames per second videos on my iPhone the TV standard is 30 frames per second so I will tap 4K at 30 frames per second 60 frames per second looks like this and it's why some videos on YouTube look silky smooth we used to record at 60 frames per second but we don't anymore but we made an exception for this video and if you could make an exception for us and hit that subscribe button we would really appreciate it back to 60 frames per second this is 60 frames per second and this is 30 frames per second some people say that 60 frames per second looks unnaturally smooth the best reason to record in 60 frames per second is that you can slow it down two times and it still looks just as smooth as regular TV hey look David we're in slow motion but is it really worth the extra cost one minute of 4K video at 60 frames per second is 440 megabytes one minute at 30 frames per second is 190 megabytes which means you can record 2.3 times more video and 30 FPS than 60fps that's a big difference and there's a secret way to knock these numbers down even a little bit further scroll down and turn off the switch next to HDR video HDR is great when you're shooting videos that have very dark parts and very bright Parts but if you're shooting a regular video and you want to maximize storage space you might lose a little bit of color range but most people probably won't notice the difference and the important thing to realize is that HDR is really still in its infancy Hollywood knows how to do it well but there is a reason why zero Tech U2 tubers are uploading in HDR not even the ones with the super expensive cameras one time we tried doing it people said we looked radioactive next let's tap back upper left hand corner of the screen then tap on record slow-mo are you a golfer like me who's obsessed with recording your golf swings well slow mo video is great for that but it takes up a ton of storage space one minute of 1080p at 240 frames per second takes up 480 megabytes use slow motion carefully and if you do choose to use it make sure to trim your videos in the photos app next we're going to tap back to camera then tap on record cinematic cinematic video on iPhone lets you take videos with a shallow depth of field meaning they have a blurry background and they take up a lot less space than regular videos on your iPhone there isn't much to worry about in here but if you're recording a movie we recommend 4K at 30 frames per second even if you're releasing it in 1080P like Mr Beast does for all of his videos you can then zoom in and you won't lose any resolution let's head back to the main camera page then tap on preserve settings this section of settings is super important and the most important switches at the very bottom scroll down and turn on the switch next to live photo live videos aren't photos at all they're actually little video files that are designed to capture short clips of things that are in motion like your kid on a swing set but because they're video files they take up a lot more space than regular photos please don't use live photos to take pictures of your houseplants because then when your friend Dan sends them to you and Dan they do look great they end up taking up a lot of the storage on your iPhone by default live photos gets turned on every time you open the camera app it's one of the worst things about iPhones but when you turn on this live photo switch and then go into the camera app and turn off the live photo option in the upper right hand corner of the screen live photos are off forever you can only take a live photo by actively turning on the live photo button now we've cleared up enough storage space on our iPhone let's head back to iCloud turn on iCloud photos and optimize storage there so open up the settings app tap on your Apple ID at the top of the screen tap on iCloud tap photos and turn on the switch next to sync this iPhone and check next to optimized iPhone storage optimize iPhone storage is a great way to save a lot of storage space on your iPhone if your iPhone is low on storage space full resolution photos and videos are replaced by smaller device size versions those versions are more than big enough for showing off to your family friends and you can still download the full resolution versions from iCloud whenever you want we were able to clear out enough iPhone storage space so I could turn on iCloud photos but if you can't you need to save even more storage space you can transfer your files to your Mac or PC I'll plug in my phone and the photos app is going to open automatically because I set it up that way if it does it for you you can tap command space to open spotlight and just type in photos and hit the return key then I'll tap iPhone on the left hand side and I'm going to check this box it says delete items after import and then tap import all new items so that's actually going to import the photos and then clear out a whole bunch of iCloud storage space and it works very similar on a PC I'll just come down here to search and type in photos and open that up then I'll tap Import in the upper right hand corner of the screen and choose from a connected device you have to look for it and find my iPhone and the most important thing to do is check the box next to delete original items after import then we want to select all the items here just tap select all items and tap import 50 to 50 items so if you're a PC person you are going to clear up a ton of iPhone storage space one of the hardest things to clear out of Iphone storage is system data that's why we made a whole video about how to clear system data on your iPhone watch that video next

Channel: Payette Forward

Views: 1,042,226

Keywords: clear iPhone storage, free up iPhone storage, clear storage on iPhone, free up storage on iPhone, clean iPhone storage, clean storage on iPhone, delete iPhone storage, delete storage on iPhone, iPhone storage, iPhone storage full, iPhone, storage, system data, what uses storage on iphone, what uses iPhone storage, how to free up space on iphone, free iphone storage

Id: gJZo6QyI8jw

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2023