The iPhone experience isn’t complete without as many apps as your heart desires downloading. But you may quickly realize that all of those apps are adding up in terms of storage space. Not all of the apps on your phone take up the exact same amount of space. Your true storage space-hogging apps are the ones that are resource intensive, offer a number of multimedia platforms to enjoy, or use GPS technology in some way. Some of these apps might even be what users refer to as “unnecessary” apps — but we keep them around because they provide enjoyment, a distraction, or a really important service.
However, if you’re in desperate need o storage space and your phone is basically unusable until you gain back storage, parting ways with certain apps or, at the very least, adjusting and updating them, will help. Here are three apps that you may consider ‘unnecessary’ (but it’s more likely you see how important they are in your life) and how to keep them from taking up so much storage space.
1. Safari
You aren’t about to delete your Safari browser (we hope). But it could be contributing a great deal to your loss of storage space. The more you search and visit websites on Safari, the more data Safari collects and the more cache it acquires. This eventually leads to its taking up a mountainous amount of storage. The best way to stay on top of Safari is by clearing its history and cookies. Go to Safari Preferences > Privacy tab > Manage Website Data to clear cookies. To clear history head to History > Clear History.
2. Streaming Apps
Streaming apps like Netflix and Hulu offer such great forms of entertainment, and many of us are watching TV shows and movies exclusively on our phones, so deleting them into the way to go. However, when you download media to watch offline, those shows stick around on your app, taking up unnecessary amounts of storage space. Be merciless when it comes to deleting old content so that you can free up as much space as possible.
3. Games
Games that features intense graphics and take up a lot of your phone’s resources (including battery power) are also going to take up a ton of storage space. A distraction or two while you’re in a doctor’s waiting room may make some of those games worth having, but if you can part ways with as many games as possible and keeping just a few, your storage space will thank you.
To find out which apps are taking up the most space on your phone, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
