When it says storage is full
See what is taking up the room, and win several gigabytes back in about two minutes.
"Storage almost full" is not a fault or a warning of failure. It is the phone telling you the closet is full, in the same tone it would use for anything else.
In practice there are only three culprits, and they are the same three on every phone: photographs and videos, one or two enormous apps, and years of messages with pictures attached.
Key points
- Find the storage list under General and read it largest first
- Empty Recently Deleted, which frees room you had already given up
- Set Messages to keep one year rather than forever
- Ignore any app offering to clean your phone for money
What to remember
- The list is ordered by size, so the top two entries are nearly always the whole story.
- Videos, then deleted photographs, then old message attachments. In that order, every time.
- Setting messages to keep one year instead of forever is the biggest single win most people have available.
Try this
Look at Settings → General → Phone Storage on your own phone, and read only the top two entries. Whatever they say is where all your room has gone, and now you know it.
Practice: When it says storage is full. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.