If your iPhone keeps telling you the storage is almost full—and it’s happening more and more often—you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common things I help people with. The good news is there are several straightforward ways to free up space, and most of them take just a few minutes.
Why your iPhone fills up
The two biggest culprits are almost always photos and videos and apps you no longer use. A single video can take up several gigabytes, and it’s easy to accumulate thousands of photos over the years without noticing. Apps also store data in the background—caches, downloads, and documents that build up quietly over time.
Step 1: Find out what’s taking up the space
Before deleting anything, see where the storage is actually going. Go to Settings → General → iPhone Storage. You’ll see a bar chart at the top showing how your storage is divided, and a list of every app with how much space it and its data are using.
Take a minute to scroll through the list. If you see large apps you haven’t opened in months, those are the obvious first targets.
Step 2: Delete apps you no longer use
On the iPhone Storage screen, tap any app to see its full details, then tap Delete App to remove it completely.
Don’t worry if you’ve paid for an app—you can always re-download it for free from the App Store. Your purchases are linked to your Apple ID and never expire.
Step 3: Back up your photos, then remove them from the phone
Photos are usually the single biggest drain on iPhone storage. The safest approach is to back them up first—to iCloud, Google Photos, or an external hard drive—then remove the originals from the phone.
If you already use iCloud Photos, your photos are stored in the cloud. You can turn on Optimise iPhone Storage (go to Settings → Photos) and your phone will automatically keep smaller previews locally while storing the full-size versions in iCloud, freeing up a significant amount of space.
If you’re not sure whether your photos are backed up, don’t delete anything yet. Call me first and I’ll help you check before anything gets removed.
Step 4: Clear Safari’s browsing cache
If you use Safari to browse the internet, it stores a cache of websites to help them load faster. Over time this adds up. Go to Settings → Safari → Clear History and Website Data to wipe it.
This won’t delete your bookmarks, but it will log you out of any websites you were signed into—so you’ll need your passwords to hand.
Step 5: Delete old messages and their attachments
Messages containing photos, videos, and voice notes can quietly consume a lot of storage. You can set your phone to automatically delete older messages: go to Settings → Messages → Keep Messages and choose 30 days or 1 year instead of Forever.
You can also go into individual conversations and hold down on any photo or video to delete it manually.
Step 6: Offload apps instead of deleting them
If you want to keep an app’s data but free up the space the app itself takes, use the Offload option. Go to Settings → General → iPhone Storage, tap any app, and choose Offload App. The app icon stays on your home screen and reinstalls automatically when you tap it.
You can also enable this automatically: on the iPhone Storage screen, look for the option to Enable Offload Unused Apps at the top of the list.
Still running out of space?
If you’ve worked through all of these steps and still can’t get enough storage—or if you’re worried about losing photos while doing this—I can help. I visit homes across Falkirk and Central Scotland, and sorting out phone storage and photo backups is one of the most common jobs I do.
Falkirk Tech Help—friendly in-home tech support across Falkirk and Central Scotland.