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DiskUsage could help you identify which files are using up the most space on your phone visually after scanning your phone, of course it will also let you select which ones to delete to release the space. To clear Safari's offline reading list, open up the Settings app and go to General Storage & iCloud Usage. Under Storage, tap Manage Storage Safari. Swipe left over the words Offline Reading. To clear cached data from all apps, go to Settings Storage and tap Cached data to clear the caches of all the apps on your phone.

Running out of storage space on your Android mobile phone? Here’s how to delete unnecessary junk and free up plenty of space for your apps and media, in just a few easy steps.

If your Android smartphone’s storage is filling up fast, don’t panic. There are loads of quick and easy ways to get rid of unnecessary junk and free up loads of storage space on your mobile, without resorting to deleting photos and apps that you might eventually need.

Here’s our quick and easy guide to freeing up your mobile’s memory.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Check how much storage remains

To find out how much storage you actually have left on your Android mobile, head to your phone’s settings and then scroll down to ‘Storage’.

In here you’ll see an exact breakdown of how much space you’re using and what is taking up that space. This is broken down into apps, photos and videos, audio (music, podcasts and so on), downloads and cached data. If you spot that one particular section is hogging loads of space, then it’s time to do something about it.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Delete any apps you no longer use

Apps are usually the biggest drain on your storage space, so head to your Android phone’s settings and then scroll down to ‘Apps’ and give it a tap.

In here you’ll see a list of all of your downloaded apps, with an indication of how much space each one is taking up. The bigger that number, the more storage you’ll get back if you delete it; so it’s time to work out if you really need that ‘Hilarious Farty App’ or if it can go straight into the bin.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Backup your photos to the cloud

The essential Google Photos app allows you to store your snaps and home-made videos in the cloud for free, and it comes as standard on most Android phones now – but if you don’t have it (only likely if your phone is already over a year old), then head to the Google Play store and get it downloaded.

With that done, tap the menu icon in the top left of the Photos app (which looks like three horizontal lines) and choose ‘Settings’. Finally, tap ‘Backup & sync’ and make sure that this is turned on. Any photos that you snap on your phone will automatically be saved to Google’s cloud service, so you can safely delete them from your mobile to free up space.

Read next: Ten quick ways to get better mobile battery life

Of course, we highly recommend checking your Google Photos account from another device first, just to make sure that they’re 100 percent backed up. After all, you don’t want to accidentally lose that photo of your mate Brian lying face-down in a puddle of his own stomach contents after too many Drambuies.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Ditch the downloads

These days it’s actually reasonably affordable to grab an All You Can Eat (AYCE) data contract, which allows you to download media to your heart’s content at no extra cost – provided you don’t roam abroad, of course.

That means you can happily delete all of the music and videos from your Android Phone and just stream your entertainment instead. Services such as Spotify, BBC’s iPlayer Radio and Netflix offer a massive catalogue of online content, which you can stream as much as you like for a small monthly charge. Just remember that you won’t be able to take advantage when travelling abroad, unless you’re covered by something like Three’s Feel At Home service.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Messaging hogs

If you use third-party messaging apps on your Android mobile, these could also be eating up your valuable storage space.

For instance, WhatsApp users should try going into one of their popular conversations and tapping the Media/Group Media option in the settings. This will bring up all of the photos that have been sent back and forth in the conversation, which can be deleted en masse to free up more space. Thankfully these pics do get automatically deleted as time passes, so you should only bother with this step if your mates send a lot of photos.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Clear your Android phone’s cache

After using a phone for a few months, chances are you’ll have at least a gig of cached data cluttering up your Android handset’s storage space. This is just garbage saved to your phone by apps and your web browser, to speed up operation, and can be safely blitzed to free up storage space.

In the Android settings menu, head to Storage and then tap the ‘Cached data’ entry. This will prompt you to delete all of the cached data. Tap ‘OK’ and it will all be erased – for now. Check back again soon and it’ll be back, ready to be re-deleted.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Clear old downloads

If you save a lot of documents, photos and so on to your phone, they’ll appear in the Downloads section of the Storage menu – or in the Downloads app. Give this a tap and you’ll see everything you’ve downloaded and how much space it all takes up. You can delete them directly from here.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Add extra storage with a microSD memory card

Many Android phones allow you to add extra storage, in the form of a microSD memory card. The microSD memory card slot is usually found in the same tray where your SIM card sits.

These memory cards are affordable and a great way to get a huge chunk of bonus storage, for your photos, videos and other bits. Check out Amazon for a huge selection of cards.

Phones from 2016 that don’t support microSD memory cards include the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, and the OnePlus 3 and 3T. In these cases, you’ll need to check out the next section instead.

How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Add extra storage via third-party accessories

If you’ve harvested all of the spare storage space that you can, but your Android phone is still pretty full, you could consider adding extra storage using accessories such as a special phone case with a built-in memory card slot. Alternatively, you can stream your media from home with a NAS device.

Check out our guides to adding extra storage to your phone:

With high-resolution photos and console-quality games, your iPhone storage fills up in no time. Even with a 128 GB model things can get out of hands fast. And if you’re using a 32 or 64 GB iPhone, chances are you’ll see that pesky “Storage Almost Full” alert much sooner.

Luckily, there are lots of things you can do to clear storage on iPhone, both manual and app-powered, so let's take a look.

What you'll need:

• Your iPhone
• A photo cleaner app Gemini Photos
• Your Mac
• A macOS cleaner app CleanMyMac X
• Internet connection

Why is my iPhone storage so full?

Your iPhone may be full of things you don’t really need. Since they take up a lot of valuable space, it’s important to find out what they actually are. Here’s how to check and manage storage on your iPhone:

1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
2. At the top, you’ll see a color-coded bar showing how much space you have left, how much is taken up, and what's taking it up. The biggest categories are usually Photos and Apps, but that depends on your usage.
3. Below there is a list of your apps sorted by how much space they take. You can tap on each app to see how much of that space is the app itself, and how much of it is the app’s Documents and Data.

Depending on how you use your iPhone, you might have a huge and bloated Photos app, bursting with photos and videos. Or it might be games and social media apps that are hoarding the most storage. Below are five easy steps you can follow to free up storage on iPhone regardless of your iPhone use.

How to clear storage on iPhone

Chances are, there’s a lot of unneeded clutter on your iPhone. And that’s actually good news. It means you can free up a significant chunk of space without deleting the things you want to keep. Here’s how to free up storage on your iPhone, step by step:

1. Clean up your photo library
2. Clear browser cache
3. Clear app cache and other app data
4. Delete attachments in Messages
5. Delete offline content

Step 1. Clean up your photo library

If you’ve checked iPhone storage like we suggested above, you already know who the main space hogger is (looking at you, Photos). Of course, wiping your whole photo library clean is not an option, but there’s probably stuff you can get rid of:

• duplicate photos, like those you downloaded twice
• similar shots (like the five selfies you took so you can pick a good one)
• photos of whiteboards, notes, checks, and things like that
• screenshots you don’t need anymore
• large videos you don’t like

You can go through your library and weed out these photos and videos manually, but a quicker and more convenient alternative is an iPhone app like Gemini Photos. Here’s how to free up some space with it:

1. Download Gemini Photos and launch it. It will automatically start scanning your library.
2. Go to Notes, Blurred, and Screenshots. This is where you’ll see screenshots, photos of text, and other useless stuff. All photos will be pre-selected, but you can deselect the ones you still need.
3. Tap Delete All.
4. Go to Similar. Sets of similar photos will be grouped and pre-selected, with the best photo in each set remaining.
5. Review a set, select other photos if you want to, and tap Move to Trash to trash selected photos.
6. When you’re done reviewing sets of similar photos, tap Empty Trash.
7. Go through Duplicates, Videos, and Other to sort out the rest of your photo library.
8. Finally, go to the Photos app, and scroll down to Recently Deleted.
9. Tap Select, and then Delete All.

After a cleanup like this your library will shrink by a few gigabytes and become way easier to navigate.

Step 2. Clear browser cache

Clear Space On Android

If you often use your iPhone to browse the web in Safari or Chrome, keep in mind that your phone may be storing caches and other data that you don’t need. And you'd be surprised how much space you can free up just by clearing your browser cache.

Here’s how to clear Safari cache:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Find Safari.
3. Choose Clear History and Website Data.

If you use Chrome, follow these steps to clear its cache:

1. Open Google Chrome on your iPhone.
2. Tap Options > Settings.
3. Scroll down and tap Privacy.
4. Tap Clear Browsing Data.
5. Choose which browsing data you want to clear (browsing history, cookies, cached images and files) and tap Clear Browsing Data.

Step 3. Clear app cache and other app data

Unlike browsers, most apps don’t give you access to their cache and other data they store, such as login data. And if you tap on each app at the top of that list in iPhone Storage, you’ll notice it has several gigabytes of so-called Documents and Data. Here’s how you clear that app data to get more iPhone storage:

1. Before you start, make sure you remember your logins to various apps or have them saved somewhere.
2. In Settings > General > iPhone Storage, tap on an app at the top of the list. This will often be a social media app like Facebook or Snapchat, a messenger, or a content app like YouTube or Spotify.
3. Tap Delete App.
4. Go to the App Store and reinstall the app.

Yup, unfortunately, this is the only way to clear cache and other app data for the majority of apps.

Step 4. Delete attachments in Messages

Texting isn’t just about text, right? You’re sending and receiving memes, GIFs, selfies, little videos of your cat falling off the couch in her sleep. All that content is stored on your iPhone even if you don’t save it to Photos, and if you text a lot it quickly adds up.

Here’s how to delete all your attachments in Messages to clear some iPhone memory:

1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
2. Scroll down and tap on Messages.
3. You’ll see a list: Top Conversations, Photos, GIFs and Stickers, and Other. Tap on the category that occupies the most space. Keep in mind that in Top Conversations, you’ll be deleting entire threads, not just the attachments. If you don’t want to do that, stick to Photos and other content.
4. Tap Edit in the upper-right corner.
5. Mark all attachments you want to delete.
6. Tap the Trash icon.

That’s it! Space-hogging attachments are gone.

Step 5. Delete offline content

You probably consume a lot of content every day — music, videos, podcasts and what not. And if you save that content offline to be able to play it on the subway or during a long flight, you have quite a lot of leftovers piled up.

As a result, apps like YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify can take up several gigabytes of iPhone storage each. So why waste space on those Stranger Things episodes you downloaded back in 2017 and a long-forgotten playlist you never listen to anymore?

Let’s start with Netflix. Here’s how to delete Netflix movies and series you saved onto your iPhone:

1. Open the Netflix app.
2. Go to Downloads.
3. Tap on the pencil icon in the top right corner.
4. Tap on the red X to delete the video.

Next up, YouTube. To delete offline YouTube videos, follow these steps:

1. Launch the YouTube app.
2. Go to Library > Downloads.
3. Tap on the three dots next to a downloaded video.
4. Tap “Delete from downloads.”
5. Repeat for each video.

Finally, to delete offline playlists or podcasts in Spotify, do the following:

1. Open Spotify.
2. Go to Your Library > Music > Playlists.
3. The playlists you downloaded will be marked with a green arrow. Tap on a playlist like that.
4. Tap on the green arrow icon below the name of the playlist.
5. When a confirmation popup appears, tap Remove.
6. Repeat for podcasts, if you have any saved offline.

You should also rummage around in Podcasts, Apple Music, and other entertainment apps you’re using. Once you’ve cleaned up all the offline content you don’t need anymore, you’ll see how much iPhone memory you’ve managed to recover.

How to prevent iPhone storage from getting full again

Just like your closet, iPhone storage will get full again, and you will have to go through the steps above every once in a while. But there are things you can do to manage your oh-so-limited storage more wisely and not have to do that major cleanup quite as often.

Store photos and videos elsewhere

Even after you’ve trimmed some fat off your library, chances are Photos still hogs a lot of iPhone space. What to do? Transfer your photos and videos to your computer or to the cloud

If you have a Mac, the easiest way is to connect your iPhone and sync all media files to the Mac. Then you can delete the originals from your phone.

Note that when you sync photos with your Phone, some of them stay cached on your Mac. This cache occupies space on your disk after the sync is done, so it’s better to clean it up. A utility like CleanMyMac X is an easy way to clear iOS photo cache (and it’s free to download). In just two clicks you’ll remove all the junk files from your Mac.

Alternatively, you can upload your iPhone photos to an online storage like iCloud. It’s pretty convenient, because iCloud Photos automatically syncs every photo and video you take to the cloud, so you can access your library from any device, as long as it has internet connection. You do have to pay for iCloud storage, though, because the free 5 GB won’t be enough for your whole photo library.

How To Clean Up Storage On My Phone Using

Here’s how to upload photos to iCloud:

1. Sign in to your iCloud.com account. It’s the same as your Apple ID.
2. Go to Settings on your device and select Photos.
3. Turn on iCloud Photos.

Now your photos are automatically synced to iCloud, which means they'll be taking up space in iCloud, not on your iPhone.

Disable saving duplicate photos when shooting in HDR

On iPhones that don’t have Smart HDR, when you take photos in HDR, your iPhone saves two shots: the original picture and the processed one. You will save a lot of iPhone storage if you disable saving these duplicates. Just do the following:

How To Clean Up Storage On My Iphone

1. Go to Settings and select Camera.
2. Disable Keep Normal Photo.

From now, only the HDR versions of your photos will be saved. That said, the previous HDR and non-HDR copies of your photos will remain, so do run your photo library through Gemini Photos to find those similar shots.

Stop storing messages forever

By default, your iPhone stores all the messages you send and receive … forever. This is convenient if you want to read your 2-years-old conversations, but not so convenient when you run out of storage because your brother sends you fifteen memes every single day.

To stop your phone from saving messages forever, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings and tap Messages.
2. Scroll down to Message History and tap Keep Messages.
3. Change Forever to 30 days or 1 year.
4. You’ll see a pop-up message asking if you want to delete older messages, tap Delete to proceed.

Bonus tip to help you clean iPhone storage

In iOS 11 and later, Apple brings storage management tools to your device. This means that you get unique storage saving suggestions based on your iPhone. They include things like Reviewing Large Attachments and Conversations, Offloading Unused Apps, Saving Messages to iCloud, and others. Therefore, if you’re running iOS 11 or later, go to iPhone Storage and check out the recommendations.

We hope you found our troubleshooting guide helpful in tackling that annoying “Storage Almost Full” message. Enjoy taking new photos and never have to worry about lack of iPhone storage again.