How irritated do you get when a notification pops up on your iPhone, reminding you that there’s no space left on your hard drive? How on earth are you now supposed to accommodate that latest selfie you took, the new game that’s up on discount or the productivity app recommended by your boss?
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this particular situation as a twenty because it annoys the patience out of me, making me want to launch my very expensive phone at a very firm and solid brick wall.
Aaaarggghhhh!
How did this happen despite all my space saving techniques? What on earth is gobbling up the KBs, MBs, and GBs on the phone?
These are the usual suspects:
- Your operating system which hogs at least 5 GB worth of space right away
- The stunning photos and videos you shoot in 4k resolution with your 12 MP camera
- HD movies, songs, and TV series you download from iTunes
- Apps also take up a lot of space on the phone. Games, especially, can be as heavy as 2-3 GB. Apps like iMovie and GarageBands are space guzzlers as well.
- File attachments in emails and media attachments in messages
Now that you’ve identified the culprits, it’s time to take back control of your phone. There isn’t much you can do about the size of the phone’s operating system, but almost everything else can be optimised to be more space efficient.
Delete all the crap you don’t want
You took two dozen photos of your sister’s new baby and turned out only a few of them came out looking decent. Well, delete the other ones, will you? What use are they to you now?
Same goes for video recording, WhatsApp media forwards, duplicate music files, and apps you haven’t used in months (and are unlikely to use in the future). Get rid of them and free up some space on your phone.
Transfer media to your laptop
If you’re the kind of person who panics at the idea of deleting absolutely anything, we have another suggestion for you – move them to your Mac or PC. And then, remove them from your phone. So, if you ever want to dig up some old picture, it’s there in your computer but isn’t eating up space on your phone.
Turn on iCloud
People these days are averse to the idea of manually transferring data to their PC or Mac. For such picky individuals, cloud storage is an excellent option. Apple’s services – iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Music Library – are pretty good. With their ‘nearline’ approach, they store newer media files locally, but the older ones are moved to the iCloud.
Consider 3rd Party Options
You don’t have to depend on Apple alone for online services. Companies like Google, Dropbox, and Microsoft are doing a good job of providing storage in the cloud. Also, if you’ve got enough speed and bandwidth at your disposal (which is a dubious claim in India) consider streaming services like Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Saavn, and Wynk for all your media and entertainment requirements.
Let’s face it, no matter which iPhone we buy, we’re likely to run out of space. And this holds true for those that have the 16 GB phone or the 256 GB phone. The only difference is that one reaches their limit sooner and the other later. Okay, a lot later. In that sense, the tips we’ve laid out here are more relevant for those who have the base model of the iPhone, be it the old 16 GB one or the latest 32 GB. However, it’s in the interest of everyone else to consider using a combination of services so that you never fall short of space on your iPhone.