We’ve all been there, you go to take a picture with your iPhone and then suddenly those infamous words appear: “There is not enough available storage to take a photo”
What then follows is the laborious and and soul-destroying process of deleting all those old pictures you value slightly less than the one you’re trying to take.
It isn’t just photos either. It’s impossible to count the times we’ve seen someone go to download a new song and been hit with the same crushing message.
Well we’re here to change all that, because hidden within the settings of your iPhone are some powerful tools that can allow you to keep all your photos and songs without deleting a single thing.
Turn on iCloud Photo Library
If you haven’t got this turned on we’d recommend you do it now. It will upload all your photos to iCloud effectively giving you a backup should you ever have your phone stolen or break it.
You’ll never have to worry about manually putting them onto your laptop and any edits you make on one device will be instantly pushed onto your other devices.
Apple gives you 5GB of free iCloud storage. This includes images, iMessages, notes, documents etc. If you’ve got more than 5GB of images then for 79p per month you can upgrade to 50GB. If you’re someone who takes a lot of photos this feels like a small price to pay.
You can do that by doing the following:
1. Settings - Photos and Camera
2. Photos and Camera - Turn iCloud Photo Library on
Optimise iPhone Storage
If you’ve got iCloud Photo Library turned on already or have just turned it on then this could be a lifesaver.
What it does is reduce the resolution of the pictures on your phone, reducing the amount of storage they take up. It can do this because the photos you take on an iPhone are far higher resolution than your screen can actually show you.
Don’t panic, all your original high-resolution images are kept in the cloud and again any edits you make will also be made to the original high-resolution image.
You can do this by going to:
1. Settings - Photos and Camera
2. Photos and Camera - Optimise iPhone Storage
Optimise Music Storage
If you have Apple Music then this could again save you some valuable storage space.
Essentially your iPhone scans your music library and then deletes songs that it knows you’re not listening to anymore. Of course you can then re-download them.
It’s an incredibly handy feature that effectively takes all the stress out of going through your entire collection and manually deleting all the stuff you don’t listen to.
To do this simply do the following:
1. Settings - Music
2. Music - Optimise Storage (Turn on)
Delete Images and Video from WhatsApp
As useful as it is, WhatsApp is usually one of the biggest culprits for running out of storage.
Don’t panic though, buried deep within WhatsApp’s settings menus is an incredibly useful feature that lets you dive into each conversation and bulk delete either images, video, audio and more.
This lets you keep the conversation (which takes up very little storage) while removing all the images, video etc that are taking up all your storage.
You can do this by opening WhatsApp and then tapping on ‘Settings’ at the bottom.
1. Settings - Data and Storage Usage
2. Data and Storage Usage - Storage Usage
3. Tap on a conversation - Manage
3. Finally select the files you want to delete and then tap ‘Clear’