Our iPhones and iPads are simply designed to make our lives better. We are happy to fill them with music, videos, games, books, podcasts. We take hundreds of photos and post them on Instagram, post interesting posts on social networks, share media content in instant messengers, and then suddenly the very moment comes when the system informs us about the lack of free space on the gadget. What to do in this case?
The memory of modern gadgets requires periodic cleaning
It is especially difficult for users of old gadgets with 16 Gb of storage on board, but even owners of devices with 64 Gb and even 128 Gb in 2022 do not always feel comfortable. After all, iOS and iPadOS work quickly when there is at least 10% free space on the flash drive.
What takes up space on iPhone
First of all, a lot of precious space is consumed by videos and photographs taken on the gadget. Every year, iPhone cameras improve and, accordingly, the quality of shooting. However, as the resolution increases, the file size also increases. It’s no surprise that a video filmed in 4K will be almost twice as large as the same video, but in FullHD.
Also, a lot of space is occupied by the media data accumulated in instant messenger correspondence - videos, voice messages, images, gifs, pdf files, and so on. We constantly share such attachments, but very rarely delete messages or entire conversations, as a result, over the course of several months, a significant amount of unnecessary data can accumulate in the same Telegram, Viber or email client.
The cache of social networking applications accumulates similarly. For active users, Facebook and Instagram can take up a very impressive amount of storage space. Although the size of the applications themselves in the App Store is small.
Fans of mobile gaming should be prepared for the fact that the size of games with decent graphics is sometimes measured in gigabytes, and over time, as the game progresses, it also grows significantly on the drive.
Recycle bin on Android - yes or no
There's no point in looking for the trash can in older versions of Android; it's not there. A special file appeared relatively recently. It is worth knowing that content deleted to the trash bin is stored there for no more than 2 months. During this period, the user can restore any deleted file, but as soon as 2 months expire, the recycle bin will be cleared of old files, recovery will become impossible
.
The shopping cart is available in new versions of Android
What else occupies an iPhone?
iOS has built-in tools for monitoring the contents of a device's flash drive. General information can be found in the settings under Basic-About this device. And more details on the way Basic-iPhone Storage . For the tablet there will be iPad Storage accordingly. A visual histogram will show how much space is taken up by applications, photos and videos, other media files, the system itself, and a section called Other . Below are tips on how to increase your storage space by downloading unused apps and optimizing high-resolution photo storage in iCloud. And even lower - the most important thing: in descending order of their “gluttony”, all applications that occupy the precious space of the built-in storage are presented. By going to each item, you can see how much the application itself “weighs” and how much space its data takes up.
How to clear iPhone and iPad memory
First of all, you need to decide which “heavyweight” applications are not needed. For example, I have never used GarageBand, and it itself weighs 1.56 Gb, and it was installed along with the operating system - we delete it. iMovie takes up a lot of space, but this is also because I recently stitched together the footage from my walk in it. To clean it, you need to go into iMovie itself and delete all projects. The finished films have already been exported to Photos; we don’t need duplicates or originals. Next, I look at what games I have already completed and haven’t accessed them for more than a month, as a result, both Asphalt 8 and Temple Run flew off the gadget along with Tom, who is running for gold, but I had to leave the tanks with Minecraft until the children had enough of playing.
Here are 5 more ways to free up memory on your iPhone.
How to clean Viber
Continuing to study the iPhone storage shows that a huge amount of space is being consumed by messenger data. The fighting technique is very simple. You need to go to WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram, and then look at conversations and delete unnecessary media files. For example, in Viber I open the desired group, tap its name at the top and in the “Media Gallery” section tap “Show all”. Found objects are subject to ruthless removal.
Viber allows you to delete all attachments or individually
In the Viber , it will be useful to go to the “Multimedia” section and in the “Store media files” subsection, instead of Indefinitely, specify, say, 1 month.
How to clean WhatsApp
In WhatsApp , click on the conversation at the top, tap on the contact’s name, then go to “Media, links and documents” and start cleaning.
In WhatsApp, you will have to delete attachments from a conversation separately
Unlike Viber, you cannot delete all messages at once. However, you can go to Settings-Data and storage-Storage, select a contact and tap “Manage” at the bottom of the screen and delete everything unnecessary.
How to clean Telegram
In Telegram, you can delete either individually unnecessary media, files, links, for which you just need to tap on the contact name or chat name at the top, or clear all media files in chats through the settings.
In Telegram you can delete individual attachments in chat
To do this, go to Settings - Data and memory - Memory usage. On this tab, firstly, you can limit the storage period of media on your smartphone, secondly, clear the Telegram cache, and thirdly, go into each chat and clear unnecessary data.
With built-in Messages you need to do the following. On the gadget, go to Settings-Messages. Find the “Leave messages” option and change from “Indefinitely” to “30 days”. In the Audio Messages section, you need to check that the “Expires” option is set to “In 2 minutes.”
Check your Messages settings
How to clean Instagram
The easiest way to clear a huge cache on Facebook, Instagram and VKontakte is to delete the application itself and then reinstall it from the App Store. Yes, then you will have to log in to each account again, but we have a Keychain. In this way I cleared out a couple of gigabytes of accumulated garbage.
We invite you to subscribe to our channel in Yandex.Zen. There you can find exclusive materials that are not on the site.
Part 4, Free up memory by rebooting
Generally speaking, iOS will automatically manage your memory and clear the system cache. However, restarting your iPad is a good way to clear the cache manually.
Step 1. Press and hold the Side or Power button until you reach the power off screen.
Step 2. Swipe the slider from left to right to turn off iPad.
Step 3. Wait at least 20 seconds after the screen turns completely black.
Step 4. Then, hold down the Side or Power button until the Apple logo appears on your screen. When prompted, enter your PIN.
Note: This method can clear the system cache on iPad, but has nothing to do with the app cache.
How to Optimize Photos and Videos on iPhone and iPad
iOS and iPadOS have a great feature that allows you to store original photos and videos in iCloud, and leave smaller versions of the files on your device. The 5 GB of cloud storage that Apple gives for free is not enough for almost anyone, so I almost immediately bought a 200 GB tariff plan for 149 rubles per month. This is quite enough for everyone who uses Apple devices in our family and we have the corresponding option enabled in the Photo settings on our devices. Nowadays, good mobile Internet is available almost everywhere, so there are no problems with downloading the desired photo if necessary.
Enable iCloud Photo Library to store photos in the cloud
If you delete photos and videos manually from the Photo application , then to actually free up space on the drive after cleaning, you need to additionally go to Albums-Recently Deleted-Select-Delete All.
Since I use Microsoft Office 365, the subscription provides 1Tb of OneDrive storage, so I have the corresponding application installed on my mobile gadgets, which immediately uploads all my photos to the Microsoft cloud, so I store only the most valuable and newest in iCloud.
OneDrive automatically saves photos taken on your device to the cloud
For those who don't use OneDrive, I highly recommend Google Photos . The service developed by the “good corporation” allows you to upload photos from devices and store them in the cloud completely free of charge with a resolution of up to 16 megapixels. and video resolution up to 1080p. This is enough for most users, including me. You won’t be able to store the original 4K video like this; you will either have to agree to convert it to FullHD, or store it in 15 GB, which Google gives for free, and for everything else you have to subscribe. By the way, Google Photo, after uploading your creativity to the cloud, offers to delete the originals from the gadget and thereby frees up space.
No photo will be lost with Google Photos
Another thing that owners of iPhone 7 and newer need to do is go to the camera settings and select the “Formats” section. Here you need to enable the “High Efficiency” option to save photos in a heic container instead of jpeg and compress video with the H.265 codec instead of H.264.
We enable new photo and video file formats on the gadget
I also recommend disabling the saving of original HDR images.
Disable saving original HDR images
Use iCloud for storage.
Sign in using your Apple ID to automatically turn on iCloud on your iPhone. To access iCloud settings, go to Settings, tap your user ID, then tap iCloud.
From there, you can see your iCloud storage available, with a graph similar to the one found on your device's storage page. – photo In the “Applications using iCloud” section, you can set the switch to select applications, for example - “Calendars”, “Contacts”, “Mail”, “Photos”, etc.) - the data of which will be automatically downloaded in iCloud.
All iPhone users automatically get 5GB of storage for free. If you don't have enough storage space, you can pay for additional storage starting at $0.99 for 50GB or $2.99 for 200GB.
How to offload unused apps on iPhone and iPad
First, you need to find out for yourself which programs have not been launched on the gadget for a long time, brazenly taking up precious space. I always delete applications that I haven't accessed for more than a month. re-downloaded from the App Store without problems if necessary .
For users who are afraid of losing data from applications that they use very rarely, Apple has provided the ability to remove the program itself from the gadget, but with a backup of all its settings and documents. This is enabled in Settings under the path iTunes Store and App Store-Download unused. The operating system itself determines which application the owner of the gadget rarely uses and downloads it. If necessary, you can always download the application from the store, and the settings and documents will remain safe and sound.
Let's let iOS decide which apps we no longer need.
Disable saving duplicate photos when shooting in HDR.
When you take HDR photos, your iPhone saves two photos: the original and the retouched one. You'll free up a lot of iPhone memory if you turn off saving duplicates. Just do the following:
Go to Settings and select Camera. Now disable the “Keep original” option (move the slider to the left). From now on, only HDR versions of your photos will be saved. Previous HDR and non-HDR copies of your photos will remain. Check that everything is as in the photo below.
What else can you delete from iPhone and iPad?
First of all, you need to remove downloaded music. I listen to Apple Music, I have a family subscription for all members of our family. But, given the availability of WiFi at home and at work, as well as a sufficient amount of mobile Internet traffic, I do not download tracks to the device, but listen to them online. In the settings, you can specify how much downloaded music should be left on the device. We follow the path Settings-Music-Storage Optimization. Turn on the toggle switch and indicate the desired size. You can get rid of music already downloaded for offline listening by going to Settings-General-iPhone Storage . Here we find “Music” , go in and delete albums and songs.
For those who buy movies from iTunes and watch them on their favorite gadget, you need to periodically open the Apple TV app, go to the “Media Library” section and clear the contents. Similarly, you need to delete listened podcasts in the application of the same name. And in the podcast settings, it also wouldn’t hurt to keep the “Delete played” toggle switch turned on.
How to Clear Safari Cache
Our favorite browser on iOS and iPadOS can also grow to unaffordable proportions over time. Fortunately, this is easy to deal with. I follow the path Settings - Safari - Clear history and data. After this, it’s true that you’ll have to log in again to all the Internet services that you use through the browser, but again, the Keychain will help.
Delete the Safari cache
How to clear Other on iPhone and iPad
When you connect the gadget to your computer in iTunes or in the Finder on a Mac with macOS Catalina, the memory usage histogram, in addition to categories with clear names (Applications, Photos), also displays an “Other” section, which sometimes reaches impressive sizes. This includes the fact that the system itself does not belong to a specific data type.
This is mainly the system cache, application cache that did not appear in the Programs category, data remaining after unsuccessful synchronization with iTunes or Finder on a PC or Mac, respectively, undeleted temporary files, and so on. You should start cleaning this section by analyzing applications and their cache in Settings.
Others can cause a lot of inconvenience
Hungry applications should be removed and reinstalled if necessary. You also need to reboot your gadget regularly. After another reboot, I somehow freed up almost half a gigabyte from the Other section. Sometimes the most drastic and effective option for cleaning this area of the drive is to reset the gadget to factory settings and restore from a backup. I also tried special utilities, in particular Phone Clean. Using this software, it was also possible to free up to 300-400 Mb of space on the device.
With the help of such simple manipulations, I manage to keep my Apple gadgets in a not very cluttered state. How do you fight for every megabyte on your devices and what would you advise me and our readers? As always, we are waiting for your comments and are ready to discuss all this in our Telegram chat.
Clearing cache
The cleaning procedure can be carried out using special applications, of which there are many on the Internet. Among them, there are several utilities that can most quickly solve this problem. You can, of course, delete unnecessary files yourself, but the process will be more effective if the owner of the device uses special programs to clear the iPad cache.
Memory clearing apps
We bring to your attention several such applications: PhoneClean Pro, PhoneExpander and CleanerPhone
The program offers a choice of cleaning:
Quick includes:
- Deleting the cache of utilities installed on the device.
- Remove duplicate photos.
- Erasing cookies.
- Deleting temporary files.
The option with deep cleansing is a plus to the above steps:
- Destroying browser history.
- Cleaning the call and SMS log.
- Removing cache from mail.
If you don’t know how to clear the cache on an iPad using this utility, then it’s very easy to do:
- choose the type of cleaning;
- We mark the items that suit us (what exactly needs to be removed);
- click “Start”.
CleanerPhone. A very practical program for optimizing Apple gadgets for users who still don’t know how to clear the cache on iPad. Among the advantages of the utility are the following:
- removes duplicate photos;
- finds and destroys duplicate contacts;
- shows the amount of free space on the tablet;
- free download.
In addition to the above-mentioned applications, you can use manual browser cleaning.
Cleaning the browser manually
If you don’t want to install any special applications, you will need tips on how to clear the cache on iPad manually. To do this you need to do a few basic steps:
