How to Free Up Space on iPhone: 13 Fixes, Biggest Gains First

By Matthieu Poulain · Updated September 26, 2026 · 8 min read

To free up space on iPhone, go after the biggest files first: delete large videos, empty Recently Deleted, merge duplicate photos, then offload apps you don't use. Check Settings > General > iPhone Storage before you start so you know what is actually filling your phone. The 13 fixes below are ranked by how much space they usually free compared with the effort they take.

First, see what's using your storage

Open Settings > General > iPhone Storage and give it a few seconds to calculate. The colored bar at the top splits your storage into categories such as Apps, Photos, Media, Messages, iOS and System Data. Below it, every app is listed from largest to smallest.

That screen tells you where to spend your effort. If Photos takes most of the bar, start with fixes 1 to 5. If one app is huge, jump to fixes 6 and 7. Our guide on how to check iPhone storage and read each category explains what every line means.

The 13 fixes at a glance

1. Delete your largest videos: huge gain, low effort
2. Empty Recently Deleted: often large, one tap
3. Merge duplicate photos: medium gain, low effort
4. Clear screenshots, bursts and similar shots: medium to large gain, medium effort
5. Turn on Optimize iPhone Storage: large gain if you use iCloud Photos, one toggle
6. Offload apps you don't use: medium gain, low effort
7. Reinstall apps with bloated caches: medium gain, low effort
8. Shrink Messages and their attachments: small to large, low effort
9. Remove downloaded music, podcasts and offline videos: varies, low effort
10. Clear Safari website data: small gain, one tap
11. Switch the camera to High Efficiency: prevents future bloat
12. Restart and update iOS to shrink System Data: varies, low effort
13. Back up, erase and restore: last resort, high effort

Fixes for photos and videos

1. Delete your largest videos

Videos are almost always the biggest files on an iPhone. A single long clip can weigh more than hundreds of photos, and a minute of 4K video can take several hundred MB. Deleting a handful of old recordings often frees more space than an hour of sorting photos.

In the Photos app, open the Videos media type to see only your clips. Longer ones show their duration on the thumbnail, which is a decent proxy for size. Delete the ones you don't need, or copy the keepers to a computer first.

The Photos app doesn't let you sort by file size, which is the fastest way to find the heavy ones. PhotoTri has a Large videos category (anything over 100 MB) and a Heaviest sort order, so the biggest files come up first and you swipe left to delete or right to keep.

2. Empty Recently Deleted

This is the fix people miss most. When you delete a photo or video, it goes to Recently Deleted and stays there for 30 days, still using space. Storage is only freed after those 30 days, or when you empty the album yourself.

1. Open Photos > Utilities > Recently Deleted.
2. Unlock it with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.
3. Tap Select, then Delete All, and confirm.

3. Merge duplicate photos

Photos saved twice from a chat, imported from an old phone or edited copies pile up quietly. Recent iOS versions find them for you in Photos > Utilities > Duplicates. Tap Merge on a set and iOS keeps the highest-quality version, combines the useful metadata and moves the rest to Recently Deleted.

If the album doesn't appear, your library may still be indexing. That happens in the background while your iPhone is locked and charging, so check again after a night on the charger. Our full guide covers how to find and delete duplicate photos on iPhone.

4. Clear screenshots, bursts and similar shots

The Duplicates album only catches exact or near-identical copies. It won't flag the eight versions of the same group photo, a burst of 30 frames, or a year of screenshots of receipts and directions. Together, these are often a bigger pile than true duplicates.

In the Photos app, the Screenshots and Bursts media types gather those files in one place. Tap Select, then drag your finger across the thumbnails and down the screen to select dozens at once, then tap the trash icon.

For look-alike shots, PhotoTri groups photos taken within seconds of each other using Apple's on-device Vision framework. You tap the one to keep, and the rest go to the app's own trash, which you review before anything is deleted from your iPhone.

5. Turn on Optimize iPhone Storage

If you use iCloud Photos, this one toggle can free a large share of your Photos space without deleting anything. Your iPhone keeps smaller versions of photos and videos, and the full-resolution originals stay in iCloud and download when you open them.

Go to Settings > Photos (in newer iOS, Settings > Apps > Photos) and choose Optimize iPhone Storage. It requires iCloud Photos, and your iCloud plan needs enough room for the whole library. If iCloud is full too, clear it out before you switch this on.

Fixes for apps and messages

6. Offload apps you don't use

Offloading removes an app but keeps its documents and data. Tap the icon later and it reinstalls from the App Store with everything where you left it. It's a safe way to reclaim space from games and travel apps you use twice a year.

1. In Settings > General > iPhone Storage, tap an app.
2. Choose Offload App to keep its data, or Delete App to remove everything.

You can also accept the Offload Unused Apps recommendation on the same screen, and iOS will offload apps you rarely open when space runs low.

7. Reinstall apps with bloated caches

When you tap an app in iPhone Storage, you see two numbers: the app size and Documents & Data. The second is its cache and saved files, and in chat, social and streaming apps it can grow far larger than the app itself.

Some apps have a clear-cache button in their own settings, so look there first. If not, deleting the app and reinstalling it from the App Store resets that data. Make sure anything you care about, like chat history, is backed up or synced before you do.

8. Shrink Messages and their attachments

Years of photos, videos and voice notes in conversations add up. In Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages, iOS lets you review large attachments and delete the ones you don't need.

To stop the pile from growing, go to Settings > Messages (or Settings > Apps > Messages) and set Keep Messages to 30 Days or 1 Year instead of Forever. iOS will then delete older messages and their attachments, so save anything important first.

9. Remove downloaded music, podcasts and offline videos

Songs, podcast episodes and shows downloaded for offline use sit in the Media category and are easy to forget. Open the relevant app, find its downloads section and remove what you've already heard or watched. You can stream or download them again later.

10. Clear Safari website data

Safari stores history, cookies and cached pages. Clearing them usually frees a modest amount and can also shrink System Data. Look for Clear History and Website Data in Safari's settings. You'll be signed out of most websites afterwards.

Prevention and last resorts

11. Switch the camera to High Efficiency

In Settings > Camera > Formats, choose High Efficiency. It saves photos as HEIF and videos as HEVC, which take roughly half the space of the Most Compatible formats (JPEG and H.264) at similar quality.

While you're there, open Settings > Camera > Record Video. It lists the approximate size per minute for each resolution and frame rate. If you rarely need 4K, a lower setting for everyday clips makes a real difference over a year.

12. Restart and update iOS to shrink System Data

System Data (once called "Other") holds caches, logs, temporary files and downloaded voices. It rises and falls on its own, and iOS clears it when space is needed. A restart often shrinks it, and installing the latest iOS update can too. Clearing Safari data and deleting large message threads also help.

13. Back up, erase and restore

If System Data stays enormous after everything else, a full reset clears out what has built up. Back up your iPhone to iCloud or a computer, erase it from Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone, then restore from that backup. It takes time and a reliable backup, so keep it for when nothing else works.

Keep it from filling up again

Most iPhones fill up the same way: a steady stream of photos, screenshots and videos that nobody sorts. Ten minutes a month is enough to stay ahead. Pick last month's photos, delete the misses, keep the good ones and empty Recently Deleted when you're done.

If your phone is already showing warnings, start with our guide to what to do when iPhone storage is full. It focuses on the quickest wins when you need space right now.