“16 GB storage is an insult to the millennial consumer.” That is our firm belief. We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve said: Don’t Buy A 16GB iPhone, Please!
But what if you’ve already bought it? Are you doomed for eternity?
Well, no!
For one, you could always buy a new phone (if only it were that easy, sigh…); or you could use this super secret trick to increase the storage of your iPhone.
1. Find out how much space is left on your iPhone. The less the better. (For this trick to work, the free space should roughly be less than 3GB).
2. Go to iTunes and find a nice movie to rent.
3. Make sure the movie is available in HD and is more than the free space on your iPhone The Martian is a good example. It’s a whopping 5.23 GB in HD!)
4. Click on “Rent HD”. Don’t worry, you won’t be charged for it just yet. And you won’t have to pay either!
5. Now, because you have less space in your iPhone than the movie requires, iOS will pop a message for you saying it “Cannot Download” the movie. (Ooh! Thanks for stating the obvious!)
6. Click on the “Settings” button on that message. Go to “General” and then to “About”. If you’re lucky, you’ll find that your phone has (magically) more storage than was previously available! Surprise!!!
We’re not really sure how or why this happens. Apparently, iOS can clear some useless junk on its own, and that too better than any other cleaning app out there.
Repeat the process and you’ll find even more space 0n your phone. And while it is definitely fun to suddenly your phone so generous in the storage it has to offer, we don’t recommend over-exploiting this feature.
For one, if you free up more space than the movie’s size (Remember Martian? The movie you originally set out to rent?), you might end up paying for the movie you didn’t really want to watch in the first place! Also, we’re not sure what iOS is deleting to make all this space. It might end up erasing some of your sensitive data in the process.
Don’t let your greed for more storage get the better of you. Have fun, but in moderation.
As an alternative, we highly recommend that you also read our complete guide to saving storage: How to Manage Space on a 16GB iPhone 6s.