What more can you delete from your iPhone to free up space?

You probably know the basic steps to take when your iPhone storage is cluttered. Uninstalling apps you never use and deleting old photos and videos will make the biggest difference, especially if you don’t have an iPhone with lots of space to begin with. But once you’ve done that, what else can you try to free up space on your phone?

Although not as impactful, there are other, less obvious ways to free up space on your device. Some won’t affect any personal data, while others will erase things you probably forgot about anyway.

To get started, visit Settings > General > iPhone Storage. This shows a breakdown of which data is taking up space, as well as which applications are hogging the most space. Take action on any obvious entries that jump out first, like a streaming app you’re no longer subscribed to and have forgotten about. This page may also highlight some lesser-known storage users.

Even if you deleted videos and giant photos from your gallery, they may be in other places on your device. They will continue to take up space in the app where you received them, whether it’s Messages or a third-party tool like WhatsApp.

If you see messages using a lot of space under iPhone Storagetap it and use the titles under Documents to examine and clean larger objects. You can check Pictures, Videos and other types of media in turn. Other messengers will show their data usage here, but you need to open the corresponding app to manage attachments. In WhatsApp, for example, go to You > Storage and data > Manage storage to find large items you can clean, including a per-cat option.

Before deleting anything important, make sure you have saved that data somewhere else (like Apple Photos, Google Photos, or a computer). If you have automatic media downloads enabled for WhatsApp, the photos have probably been downloaded and then uploaded to Google Photos or similar, but it’s worth being sure. To optimize in the future, consider turning off autosave so that your friends’ memes don’t waste space.

In many iPhone apps, deleting items actually sends them to a Recently deleted case. This gives you a chance to get them back if you change your mind, but it also continues to use storage. Check these folders if you’re short on space, especially if you’ve just deleted a lot of items.

In Photos, tap Collections at the bottom, then scroll down and tap Recently deleted below Utilities. After you authenticate, use this page to permanently delete anything you’re sure of. Faucet Select, and then the three points (…) button to use Delete all if there are many.

Other built-in apps have similar menus. For example, in the Files app, tap the arrow at the top left until you reach Browsewhere you can consult the Recently deleted section. While you’re here, On my iPhone is another good place to check. You may have downloaded large PDFs, videos, game ROMs to use in Delta or similar that are easy to overlook. If you use another file manager like Readdle Documents, check there for stray files that you no longer need.

One of the biggest users of storage on my phone is media content downloaded to apps. I have songs in Spotify, podcasts in Overcast, offline maps in Google Maps, and YouTube videos all ready to go. These can quickly get out of hand, especially with podcasts where you may not have an episode download limit set.

To control them, first open the app and delete anything that doesn’t interest you. Next, look for controls to set a limit on future downloads. Spotify has several options for this, accessible by tapping your profile picture in the top left and choosing Settings and privacy. Below Media qualityuse it Download quality options to reduce the quality of future downloads so that they take up less space. The button by Update existing downloads will modify existing downloads to free up more space.

Head to Settings > Apps > Podcasts and use Download automatically to limit the number of episodes that will remain downloaded at a time. Disable Download video unless you really care about it. You can customize these settings per show by opening it in the Podcasts app, followed by the three points (…) menus and Settings. The option of Delete Read Downloads should be enabled here as well.

Browse the menus to find apps like these. Deleting old downloads and reducing the quality of future downloads will be very useful for streaming apps (including YouTube, if you have Premium or Premium Lite).

You can reduce the storage used by Apple Photos by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. Choose Optimize iPhone storage instead of Download and keep the originals to keep low resolution photos on your phone so that high quality ones don’t use up space. There is the option to download the original image for those special ones.

If you haven’t already done so, clearing your iPhone’s various caches can also save space. However, this will cause affected applications to run slower for a while, and most applications will rebuild their caches before long anyway. It’s worth a try if you’re extremely low.

I tried Apple Intelligence on my phone a while ago and disabled it shortly after, but it still takes up about 7GB of space (under Settings > General > iPhone Storage > iOS). Apparently your phone will correctly free up this space if your storage is full. You can also try changing your iPhone’s region to somewhere Apple Intelligence isn’t supported (like Ukraine) and see if it reclaims space that way.