Written by Naomi Agbaje• May 23, 2022• 8:12 am• How-tos, Mobile, Tech • Views: 2

How To Free Up Space On My Smartphone

You suddenly find yourself in a situation where you urgently need to download a vital document or app on your device, and then you realise your storage is whole. We know how annoying that can be; here is the good news, you are in the right place. We will show you how you can free up space on your smartphone.

Whether you use an Android phone or an iPhone with large storage space, your storage can get packed.

If you work as a Youtuber, Influencer or video person, you can relate to this. Or, if you are the type that downloads many movies on your phone, you will be able to relate.

Phone storage is a place in the phone where data is kept, like your media, files and apps.

It might be a handful deleting your other records and files to create space for the new ones. Especially if you are using a device with less than 128GB, you might have had this problem recurring on your device.

What is taking space on my phone?

Before creating space on your phone, you need to figure out what has been taking space.

There are cases in which phone storage is whole but nothing on the phone.

So, this process would help you identify the app or folder that has been eating up your storage space.

To know this, go to the settings on your phone and visit the phone storage section.

It would show you a breakdown of all your apps, media and files with the percentage of storage that they take.

Once you can identify the apps, files, and media, you can begin to apply the options below.

How to free up space on my phone?

Get extra storage
Delete old messages
Delete documents within apps that you aren’t in need of anymore.
Uninstall apps you do not use.
Use third-party apps to store pictures and files.
Clear your cache.
WhatsApp storage manager

Get extra storage

If you don’t want to delete anything from your phone, as they are all important, you can opt for this.

Although not all devices support extra storage, you can get one for a device that supports it.

Owning an extra storage space, you do not have to worry about your phone storage is full.

You can always move and save some of your files to the extra storage to create more storage on your phone.

Delete old messages

Another way you can create space on your device is to delete old messages on your phone.

Some spam messages, bank messages, or offer messages get sent to your phone.

If you do not use it, you can delete them from your phone.

Or you can visit old messages you do not have use for and delete them from your device.

However, some devices can help you automatically delete messages.

If you are using an iPhone, you can automatically delete messages after a period.

You can delete messages after a week, month or year.

Delete documents within apps that you aren’t in need of anymore

Some apps have documents you do not have use for.

An example includes reading apps that have books or documents you have read.

You can decide to delete those books and documents to create more space on your phone.

Uninstall apps you don’t use

You do not want to delete all your apps and media to create space.

However, there are still some that you can let go of.

Especially those you haven’t used in a while.

To do so, click on the app you wish to delete.

Click on uninstall to remove the app from your phone.

It would help if you tried this after trying every other way of creating space on your device.

Use third-party apps to store pictures and files.

Some third-party apps enable you to save media and files online without saving them on your phone.

They come with their cloud that saves the data.

And when you need your data, you can easily access them online.

One of which is Google files (photos, doc, excel)

You can save documents, sheets, links, photos, and even videos on these Google platforms.

You do not need to have the app before accessing them; you need to have an enabled Google account on your phone.

And then, you can access it from your web browser.

Another third-party app you can use for saving data is Snapchat.

Even when you do not have storage space on your phone, you can always use Snapchat for videos and pictures.

And these pictures and videos are saved on the platform cloud.

Snapchat can work when you hurriedly need to take pictures, and your storage is full.

Using an iPhone, you can use Apple’s cloud to back up your photos and videos.

Apple comes with an iCloud storage that enables people to back up their pictures and videos even after deleting them.

Apple stores pictures and videos deleted for 30 days in its recently deleted, making it easy to recover things.

However, you should know that the first 5GB of Apple storage is free, but every month, you will need to be paying money to have up to 50GB or more, depending on the Apple plan you choose.

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Clear your cache

Asides from clearing the files and media you do not need anymore, you can also clear your web browser cache.

However, you should note that this will sign you out of every website that you have accessed through the web before.

If you use Google Chromebook, follow the steps below.

Open Google Chromebook
Click on the three dots at the top right of the screen.
Scroll through and tap “History’.
Select “Clear browsing data”.
You will see a list of things you can decide to delete; browsing history, saved passwords, autofill, cookies and site data and others. It also breaks it into smaller units; you can decide to delete your browsing data for the last 24 hours, a week or a month.
After deciding what to delete, click on “Clear browsing data”.

However, if you are using an iPhone, you most likely are using safari.

To delete cache from safari, follow the step below.