Maybe you downloaded too many movies to your iPhone or maybe you didn’t – who’s to say? But when you get that “iPhone storage almost full” or "iPhone 6 storage full" message, warranted or not, you’ll probably start asking yourself why you sprung for the extra few gigabytes of memory in the first place.
The fact is, it’s not as big of a problem as you think. We turned to Reddit – one of our favorite peer-driven communities – to see what people like ourselves had to say. User u/analogboy85 had a similar issue, and it was found that the problem could stem from the phone, or the user could benefit from jettisoning some unnecessary data.
Either way, here are some of the solutions that worked for everyday folks experiencing the same problem.
Clear cookies and cache
Especially if your iPhone 6 has a smaller memory – think 16-32GB – it can be more than the mere shame of your web history that’s weighing you down.
User u/tekukuno reported shaving a whopping 11GB off of their phone simply by clearing their website data and caches. Simply by going to General>Safari and then checking your web data storage from there, you can save precious gigabytes quickly. This is definitely a smart option before clearing any photos, messages, or apps.
Streaming video much?
While we might expect perfection, sometimes a minor glitch may make things appear worse than they are. The good news is, a simple solution is usually enough to get things back to normal.
“I had a similar problem that arose because I streamed a lot of my iTunes videos,” says u/zslayer89. “The phone thought I was out of space. All I had to do was sign out of iTunes on my phone, restart the phone, then sign back into iTunes on the phone and everything was fine.”
What’s the secret behind the magic? Well, signing out allows you to clear your iTunes cache – this works not just for video, but for music, as well.
Manage your business...
“I assume you have since you know how much storage you're supposed to have remaining, but have you already looked in Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage?” said u/shameonewe.
Sure, it’s sort of an obvious answer, but it’s a great way to keep track of your storage. And if you didn’t know about this tool before – you know who to thank.
Manage Storage allows you see how your storage is being utilized by different apps, your camera, messages, and more.
Then trim it down
There are plenty of places to look if you want to save a few gigabytes. Here are a few suggestions:
– Clear out that “recently deleted” folder. While you think that you’ve gotten rid of that unnecessary stuff, it lingers around much longer than you think.
– Get rid of apps you don’t use. Many apps can ring in at over 15-20MB apiece. If you have even a handful you don’t use, you can clear up some much-needed space by getting rid of them.
– Clear out your messages and voicemails, but be careful not to delete the important ones! We’re just looking out for you. After all, if you’re getting the “storage almost full” message, don’t want to be labeled a digital hoarder.
There are wholesale ways of clearing both of these. Whether it’s all messages older than 30 days or all messages older than a year. But if you think there may be something you want to hold on to, it might be worth investing the extra few minutes to delete messages one at a time.
If all else fails…
Unfortunately, the OP had no choice but to restore their iPhone to factory settings. While that did work, it required the user to back up all their important information. “Thank God for iCloud, I guess,” u/analogboy85 said.
However, there are other options than iCloud, of course. You can always back up your information onto your computer or another drive before doing your restore. As long as you’re sure you’ve backed up all the data you need before deleting it, the process should go through without a hitch.
