You might expect that some of the more resource-intensive apps on your device are naturally going to take up storage space. But if they are giving to you in the form of convenience or entertainment, you might not even mind this fact of life — you may accept it as part of the deal.
But when an app is more or less “useless,” which we’ll define here as one that isn’t giving back to you but is still taking, taking, taking, the imbalance becomes more evident. And if at any point that imbalance results in you receiving annoying pop-ups about how you are out of storage space (and now have to scramble to free up space), your impetus to delete useless apps sooner may become even stronger.
You can start with these seven useless apps that are hogging up your storage space.
Podcasts
If you use the Podcasts app, you won’t consider it useless — you may consider it one of your favorites, in fact. But if you used the app once and never listen to podcasts again and this app is on your phone collecting podcasts that you don’t listen to, all of those podcasts are using up storage space. Delete the app to conserve space.
Old Games
When was the last time you played Angry Birds? If the answer is in the form of a year that’s not in this decade, delete it. The games you never play are likely running on old software that hasn’t been updated. This not only hogs up your storage but can put you at greater risk for bugs.
Music Streaming Apps
Like podcasts, apps that stream music for you collect a lot of data and files. These files take up storage space. This is all fine and good if you listen to them frequently and it may be worth the trade-off, but if you have several apps for music, consider deleting a few you rarely use to conserve space.
Video-Streaming Apps
We are lumping a number of different apps under the banner “video-streaming apps,” because we don’t want to single out Netflix or Hulu as worse than any of the rest. The point is that apps that stream video content are taking up your storage. You can handle this in one of two ways: cut down on the number of these apps that you use or be diligent about deleting files after you’ve enjoyed watching them.
Social Media
There’s no way around this one: social media apps take up storage space. Some are worse than others, and if you’re looking for ways to improve your space, deleting Instagram can be one of the most helpful. Of course, if you’re like so many IG users who thinks this is a drastic measure, another way to help conserve space is by deleting duplicate photos and changing the settings in Instagram so that you aren’t saving copies of everything that you post.
Safari
You aren’t going to delete your Safari browser — nor is that a suggestion we’d made. But you can free up storage space by being mindful about how Safari takes up space. It’s important to periodically go into Safari and clear your history and data to free up storage space.
Photos
Your Photos app is likely the source of most of your storage woes. And the best way to handle this is by setting up iCloud and saving the photos and videos you plan on keeping for the long haul to the Cloud. Make a few difficult choices about which photos and videos can be deleted, and consider changing your settings in Photos so that deleted photos are permanently deleted after 30 days.
