How Do You Get More iPhone Storage? (5 methods to try)

One of the easiest and most effective ways to get more iPhone storage is to buy additional storage in iCloud. Other than that, using alternative storage like Google Drive or Dropbox works great. You can also try freeing up storage, getting an external drive, or trying storage management applications.

Finding the best method out of these five choices is also very important. Because not every single method will be suitable for everyone. To find out what works for you the best, you have to know how each of these methods can get more storage in your iPhone. So, let’s dive in. 

What eats up storage on an iPhone?

Solving the storage issue on your iPhone starts with figuring out what is eating it up in the first place. 

Sometimes unnecessary or unused files take up a lot of space on your iPhone without your knowledge.

Most of the time, photos and videos are the main culprits for taking up a lot of storage on your iPhone. 

They tend to be very large, and if you have duplicates of these files, they are pretty much unnecessary files consuming space.

To find out what’s taking up space on your phone, you only have to look at the iPhone storage management setting. 

Simply go to the settings option, go to general, and there you should find the iPhone storage option. When you tap on that, it will give you a breakdown of the files taking up storage.

Here, you will get a complete overview of the storage based on the file types. 

5 ways to get more storage on iPhone

You can try one of them or multiple to get the best possible results with extended storage on your iPhone. Each solution will give you some results; the only difference is that some are much more effective than others. Let’s get through those quickly.

Buy storage

The first and most obvious solution you can go with is to buy additional storage for your iPhone. 

Buying storage doesn’t mean increasing the internal storage, as it’s almost impossible to do that without replacing the hardware.

When you opt for storage, you are essentially buying storage in the cloud storage service for your iPhone. 

With additional storage in your iCloud account, you can easily sync and store your files in the cloud.

In your iCloud account, you get 5 GB of free space in the beginning. Extending the storage requires you to upgrade your iCloud to iCloud+. 

The upgrade comes with various storage plans where you have to pay a monthly charge for using them. So, it can be a bit costly.

Use an alternative cloud drive.

If upgrading to iCloud+ doesn’t seem viable and you want more versatility, go for another cloud drive. 

A great alternative to your iCloud+ option would be Google Drive. And it’s not that difficult to create and maintain a Google Drive, either.

All you will need is a Gmail account to have a cloud space in your Google Drive. 

In fact, the Gmail account allows you to have space across all the platforms from Google, including photos and Google Drive.

Initially, you will get 15GB of free space with your Google account, which you can expand by purchasing more storage. 

Just like iCloud+, Google also comes with several storage plans. The prices are also pretty reasonable.

The additional benefit of Google Drive is that it is universal and versatile. Anyone in the world can have access to your files upon approval, so it’s easy to share files with others as well.

Free up storage

Paying for additional storage doesn’t need to be the only solution. Also, it doesn’t help you with internal storage anyway. 

The most effective way to get more internal storage in your iPhone is by freeing up space on your phone.

You can delete unused and unnecessary files to free up storage. Also, you can move some files to cloud storage or your computer. 

Depending on the file type and importance, you can decide which one is better suited for your needs.

Otherwise, you can always clear the cache files on your iPhone to free up a lot of space. 

These are usually unnecessary files stored on your phone for slightly better-performing applications. You can still have working applications without these files.

To free up storage, you first have to check the files that are eating up space. From there, you can decide which files are necessary and which are unnecessary. 

Also, you will get some recommended actions to free up space in the storage settings.

Get an external drive

When freeing up storage isn’t giving you enough space to store your files, it’s time to get an external drive. 

You can get a USB storage device to connect externally to your iPhone and get more storage instantly.

You can also find expandable memories with Wi-Fi connections, which are much more convenient. 

It may not be as efficient as your internal or cloud storage, but you can definitely get some extra storage. And there are no monthly charges either.

Manage storage with an automated application.

A lot of the time, you will have some unwanted and unnecessary hidden files taking up space on your iPhone. 

You can’t find these without going through a world of trouble. That’s when using an automated storage management app can help you out.

Storage management apps scan through your phone and list out all the files based on categories. 

Then, you can clean up the unnecessary files from your phone with a few clicks. You can find plenty of clean-up apps for managing your iPhone storage in the app store.

Why is iPhone storage full even after deleting?

Sometimes, even after deleting many files, you may encounter the “low storage” issue on your iPhone. 

There are various reasons for that to happen. Here are some possible reasons to have full storage even after deleting files from your iPhone.

Files remaining in the recently deleted folder

When you delete your photos and videos from your iPhone, they often remain in the recently deleted folder. Simply remove the files permanently to completely free up storage on your iPhone.

Cache files are too large.

You might have deleted the files, but your phone can have a lot of cache. These cache files can become very large over time, which causes your iPhone’s storage to get full. To fix the problem, you must find and delete these cache files.

An old iPhone backup stored in the phone

If you have the automatic backup option turned on, then there will be plenty of backup files stored on your phone. 

Sometimes the older backup files remain on the phone even after a new backup has been stored. This can also cause iPhone storage to get full.

Check for such files and delete them as you see fit.

It can be a bug

Seeing the iPhone storage be full can be a simple bug sometimes. It’s just a visual bug that shows your phone has full storage even after deleting files. 

Resetting or rebooting the device can easily fix the issue. Or you can upgrade to the latest iOS, which also fixes it.

Tips to avoid getting your iPhone’s storage full

While there are obvious fixes to iPhone storage getting full, there are some things that you can always do to avoid the issue overall. Below are some tips that can prevent iPhone storage from getting full.

• Optimize your device storage from time to time
• Always try to save your photos and videos to the cloud.
• Offload the unused apps to save the app storage in your phone
• Enable automatic message deletion
• Keep the iPhone updated to the latest iOS.
• Use applications to store photos and videos at a lower resolution.

FAQs

There are plenty of questions people frequently ask regarding iPhone storage. Here, we will answer most of those questions to clear up any confusion. Let’s check it out.

What happens to an iPhone with full storage?

Whenever the iPhone storage gets full, it can cause some performance issues on your phone. The phone will start slowing down if the available storage goes below 1GB. It will also become a bit laggy in some apps.

Which apps eat up more storage on an iPhone?

Typically, streaming apps take up a lot of space on your iPhone. Apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO, Spotify, and other such platforms eat up plenty of space on your phone.

Can you delete all files for free storage?

No, you can’t delete all the files in your iPhone’s free storage. You have to avoid deleting the system files on your phone. If you delete any system files, it may cause the iPhone to malfunction and not work properly at all.

Conclusion

By now, you know how to get more iPhone storage. But you may still have confusion regarding which method to use. Try one that is suitable for you. First, try freeing up space; if that doesn’t help, buy storage or use an external drive. 

If you want to always access files, then buying storage is a better option. But if you don’t want monthly charges. Go with an external drive.

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