I’ve Run Out of Storage on My Smartphone. How to Free Up Space

Here’s help locating the files and data behind all that digital clutter

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

Comments

Published October 15, 2024

a trash can icon on a smartphone filled with files

Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: Getty Images (3))

I want to free up storage on my smartphone. How can I find out which files are eating up all the room?

I’ve told people that a good way to weed their smartphones of digital clutter is to get rid of apps they rarely use. But apps aren’t the only reason your smartphone storage is packed to the gills.

If your phone is anything like mine, you’re likely bumping up against capacity limits because of the audio photo and video files on the device. You can certainly free up space by moving these files to the cloud, and generally, that’s a fine option, especially if you’re willing to pay for extra online storage.

But you asked specifically about which files are the main offenders now on your phone, and thus candidates for the scrap heap. Whether you have an iPhone or an Android, identifying such files and sending them off to pasture is pretty easy.

Breaking down iPhone storage

I’ve used up roughly half the 512 gigabyte (GB) capacity on my own iPhone 15 Pro Max. You can find out the storage breakdown on your iPhone by launching Settings and tapping General | iPhone Storage.

Apple displays a simple color bar graph showing everything taking up space on the phone, categorized by applications, messages, music, photos, mail and so on.

Apple then suggests ways to free up space. The top recommendation is to Review Large Attachments, which reveals the photos, videos and attachments eating away storage. I could save up to 40.18 GB on my own phone by deleting all such large attachments, Apple said.

But I want to cherry-pick the attachments I might be willing to discard and suspect you would, too. Tap the right pointing arrow > to view these attachments by size order, along with a thumbnail of the files and the date from which they were from.

To get rid of some or all of the attachments, tap Edit in the upper right corner of the screen, then tap your finger on the circle to place a checkmark beside each of the files you want to delete. Tap the trash can symbol at the upper right corner of the screen to complete the exorcism.

Apple’s next recommendation is to Auto Delete Old Conversations, which on my device could save up to 29.37 GB. This grouping consists of all messages and attachments sent or received more than a year ago. To automatically get rid of these, tap Enable and then Enable again.

Be aware: If you choose this option, all messages and attachments older than a year will continue to be discarded.

Review Downloaded Media is next on the list. Here, I was told I could save up to 1.33GB by removing downloaded videos and audio files. Again, I can see what these files are by tapping the right-pointing arrow >.

It turned out to be a couple of audiobooks from Audible. To remove the media, tap Edit and then tap the red circle next to each file you want to wave goodbye to.

The next recommendation is to Remove Older Downloads, which on my device didn’t amount to much, a mere 58.3 MB. When you Enable this setting, the iPhone will keep only the five latest automatically downloaded episodes of a given show. According to Apple, episodes that you saved or manually downloaded won’t be touched.

Separately, the iPhone shows you all the apps on your phone and how much storage they’re taking up, listed by default in size order. If you prefer, you can also list them by name or last used date.

I was a tad surprised to discover that at 40.01 GB, the Messages app on my phone was the number one storage offender, ahead of 38.73 GB for Music files, 33.64 GB for Photos and 28.37 for Voice Memos.

Tap the right arrow > next to these and other listings for options on how to treat these files. In some cases, you can tap Delete App to remove not only the app but all related data, an option that Apple warns cannot be undone.

Alternatively, tap Offload App, which frees up storage used by the app but keeps its documents and data. If the app is still available, you can later reinstall it, and all your data will theoretically be restored in the right place.

Related:

Breaking down Android storage

Google Pixel. Android devices are not all the same, thus where to get the skinny on bloated files also varies — and yes, I’m mixing a metaphor. On a Google Pixel, tap Settings | Storage.

Google reveals how much of your device’s capacity is already occupied and how much space you still have available. It then lists the apps, images, system files and other data that are consuming all that space.

If you tap Free up space, Google takes you to the Files app on the phone where storage is broken down by Categories: Downloads, Images, Videos, Audio, etc.

In the Files app you’ll also see a category for Other storage, where in my case, the Pixel revealed the files I am storing online in Google Drive, which obviously is not on-device storage.

Samsung Galaxy. You can find your storage breakdown on a Samsung Galaxy by launching Settings | Device care | Storage.

Samsung reveals the percentage of your internal storage that is used and lists the files, apps and so on behind that number.

Ask The Tech Guru

As with Apple, Samsung lists shortcut options. Tapping Trash lets you get rid of files sitting inside the Trash in various apps.

Tapping Unused apps collects apps you haven’t used in 30 days and gives you the option to get rid of them.

Tapping Duplicate files IDs files that you have multiple copies of, which may be a no-brainer to delete.

And by default, tapping Large files flags files larger than 25 MB. Not big enough? Tap the three vertical dots ⋮ in the upper right corner of the screen to flag files larger than 100 MB, 500 MB or a custom size you can choose.

Related:

Bonus tip: Clean up more than your rarely used files

Why stop at removing files? Now that you’ve got momentum and freed up space on the phone, freshen up your device in other ways.

Curtail notifications, unsubscribe to newsletters you rarely if ever read, and clear an apps cache or temporary data. You not only will be clearing out your phone, you’ll also be clearing out your head.

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Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune, and is author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn; Threads; and X, formerly known as Twitter.

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