Why phones are running out of storage faster than ever

Until recently, the technology industry seemed to follow a steady rhythm of new products, offering new features, often faster or more efficient than before, all becoming less expensive over time. Apple’s Macintosh SE cost the median American household 9% of its annual income when it was released in 1987; in 2026, the average worker will only be able to invest one week of the family salary for an iPhone 18 Pro Max. Likewise, this flagship smartphone’s 256GB of storage is 6,400 times the storage that comes with a high-end hard drive for the Mac SE. But there’s a catch: it never seems like there’s enough storage.

As we wonder how many photos, downloads and apps we can store on our devices, the pace of technological innovation is changing. An AI-driven supply crisis is driving up prices across the tech industry for everything from gaming consoles to storage drives. This trend also slows down product development, meaning improved hardware hits store shelves more slowly.

Software needs, meanwhile, are expected to continue to increase. We’ve already gone from rough 360p video before the iPhone to 4K, and file sizes have exploded with resolution. Applications that used to be 10 megabytes are now several times larger, in part because of their increasingly complex functionality. With these increased capacities and larger files, there is more room for unnecessary tasks, more processes to run, and more things that end up being kept, even though we think we are freeing up space.

Apps aren’t just lightweight web pages that connect to your favorite services. As Spotify’s R&D blog explains, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. Apps contain the initial download package, installed app, a cache containing updated content like music and news. Remember that there are update packages that also change the fundamental installation of the application, such as updated user interfaces, prompt flows, and other essential logic.

Facebook, for example, comes in as a ~100MB download on Android devices from the Google Play Store, but expands to 600MB after logging in on my phone, and that’s just the app. Facebook stores my personal data separately, which is another 900 MB, including stored login information, local copies of my recent photo and video uploads, personalized ad tracking technologies. When I use Facebook, this cache can reach 1.5 GB of posts and other content that it will serve me during the next feed refreshes. Some users have reported their Facebook app installs reaching gigabytes, some north of 10 GB.

Updates introduce more code and more features to comply with certain goals, standards and regulations. This might involve adding a system to verify online payments or more detailed game texture assets. These incremental changes definitely added up: a 2024 TRG Datacenters study found that WhatsApp grew 167% from a decade before a 40MB download, while Slack grew 500% at 60MB, according to a TechRadar report. Video games alone went from 50 MB to 2 GB.

The need for a budget-friendly digital camera was obviated long before we had 200-megapixel sensors on our phones. Some of us took full advantage of our hardware, going from 12 MP photos to 50 MP photos. Even with quadrupling the resolution, the formatting efficiency on average only produces a doubling or tripling of size. That said, it’s not much comfort to go from 1080p to 4K and start cramming together lots of multiples of 8MP stills every second. Additionally, phones like the Pixel 11 Pro can record 10-bit HDR, potentially 64 times the expansion of the traditional 8-bit color palette.

The files themselves aren’t the only problems. Device manufacturers keep photos, videos, downloads, notes, and other media on our local devices by default. Even if you have enabled file syncing with Google Photos, iCloud, or another cloud service, they usually act as data copy services rather than a backup so you can delete them from your phone. Additionally, many applications provided by your operating system will still store files you put in the “Recycle Bin” for up to 30 days before deleting them from your storage.

You can take steps to reduce the amount of data stored on your phone. Most of the generally recommended measures you’ll hear about may, in a sense, feel like using a bucket to scoop out water rushing onto a sinking ship, but they can still be useful in a pinch. This includes going to your apps trash to delete files before the 30 day threshold. Many phone and tablet settings apps now have features to clear old app data, although this may mean you’ll have to sign back into the accounts associated with those apps.

When it comes to using your camera, evaluate whether you should lower your default resolution settings to 1080p or even 720p at 30FPS or 24FPS per second. A common tip for smartphone cameras these days is to see if your camera app can record using the more data-efficient HEVC codec, or even choosing less detailed resolution settings.

When it comes to beastly apps like Facebook, you can go into their settings and enable data saver buttons or, in some cases, replace them with “Lite” alternatives – including what we called the “good” version of Facebook Messenger – either directly from the developer or from third parties designed to reduce overall data usage. In many other situations, you can skip their apps altogether and use their web experiences, which often take up much less space but may not work offline.