Few things are more frustrating than pulling up your camera for a photo and getting hit with the \u201cCannot Take Photo\u201d message. Your iPhone is out of space, and it always seems to happen at the worst possible time. The thing is, most people don\u2019t actually need a bigger phone \u2014 they just need to clean up the storage they\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s where all that space is going and how to claw it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before you start deleting things at random, take a look at the breakdown. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage<\/strong> and wait a few seconds for it to load. You\u2019ll get a color-coded bar showing exactly what\u2019s eating your storage \u2014 apps, photos, messages, system data, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For most people, photos and videos are the biggest offenders by a wide margin. A single minute of 4K video takes up around 400 MB. If you\u2019ve had your phone for a couple years and never cleaned house, you could easily have 30\u201340 GB of photos and videos sitting there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Below the bar chart, you\u2019ll see a list of every app sorted by size. Tap any app and you\u2019ll see two numbers: the app itself and its data. Sometimes the app is tiny but its data is enormous \u2014 podcasts you\u2019ve downloaded, offline playlists in Spotify, cached videos in social media apps. That\u2019s where the hidden storage hogs live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few things you can do right away: delete apps you haven\u2019t opened in months (iOS even flags these for you), clear out old text message threads with lots of photos and videos, and dump your Safari cache. That alone can free up several gigabytes without much effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n