Is your phone’s storage full? Here are a few ways to clear up space

If you’ve received a notification that your phone’s storage is full, no need to panic. You can free up a ton of space without deleting all of your apps. Whether you have an iPhone or Android device, the number one culprit that fills your storage is often photos. Here are four online photo sites that offer a ton of free storage:

Google Photos

Available for iOS, Android, and the web, Google Photos lets you choose between two sizes: high quality for unlimited storage (from phones or cameras 16 megapixels or less) or original (DSLR camera) for limited storage which uses your 15GB Google storage allowance. To better understand how much this is, note that a standard iPhone 6S photo contains approximately 12 megapixels. 

Within the app’s settings, you can select FREE UP SPACE to remove original photos and videos that may already be backed up. Google Photos is extremely noteworthy with facial recognition, allowing you to search by face, activity, location, and more.

Amazon Prime Photos

If you have Amazon Prime, then you have access to free unlimited photo storage and five extra GB for videos and other files. Without Prime, the service is $12 a year. To make space on your device, turn on automatic photo back up.

Shoebox

Available for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and the web, Shoebox is an app that offers free unlimited photo backup to mobile and desktop. The service is free for pictures with10.6 megapixels in resolution, and will automatically compress anything larger. In order to upload the photo’s original quality, a pro version of the app is available for $5/month.

Flickr

Available for iOS, Android, and the web, Flickr is the best option for DSLR photos, offering 1,000 GB of free storage to accommodate high resolution images. The file limit for photos is 200 MB per image, while videos can be up to 1 GB or three minutes long. Flickr’s mobile apps have an auto-upload option, making it simple to set and not have to worry about what’s been backed up. It’s a useful tool for photographers who enjoy manually tagging their images and want the flexibility of uploading high-resolution pictures.

If you’ve deleted your photos and still have no space, no need to fear. We’ve gathered some tips to help you reclaim storage.

iPhone users:

If you have an iPhone, go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage. You’ll be able to identify what’s taking up the most space and delete the content right from Settings.

Here are 11 more iPhone tips to get back some storage:

1. Delete and re-install apps that have large “documents and data” requirements shown in Manage Storage.

2. Delete burst photos: Open the Photos app > Albums > Burst > Select the best photo > Done > Keep only one favorite.

3. Delete Safari browsing history: Settings > Safari > Clear History and Browsing data, then scroll to the bottom and select Advanced.

4. For Chrome, open the app, tap the menu icon and then History, and select Clear browsing data.

5. Keep only recent texts: Settings > Messages > Message History, select 30 days.

6. Turn off Photo Stream: Settings > Photos & Camera > disable My Photo Stream.

7. Keep only the HDR photo: Settings > Photos & Camera > scroll to the bottom and disable Keep Normal Photo.

8. Turn off as many app notifications as possible.

9. For music apps such as Spotify and Pandora, disable Available Offline for those playlists and albums you can live without.

10. Delete videos, podcasts, and books.

11. Delete old voicemails by swiping left in the app.

If your iCloud account is full, it may be because it’s storing backups from old devices. To fix this, go to Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage, then select the outdated backup and hit Delete Backup. You can also delete information under Documents & Data in iCloud storage settings by tapping the app and then swiping left on each item to delete.

As a final resort, back up and then restore your iPhone to factory settings. If the bulk of your storage space is marked Other or your phone is still receiving those “Storage Almost Full” alerts, then you will need to reset your iPhone.

Doing so will erase all the data on your device, so you’ll first need to back it up to your computer. Simply plug your iPhone into your computer, open iTunes, click Backups, select This Computer, and click Back Up Now.

After the backup is complete, click Restore iPhone and the process rids of any corrupted data or files that are taking up space in your iPhone.

Android users:

If you own an Android device, the simplest way to get more space on your phone is to install a microSD card and migrate data onto it. Many Android phones including the LG G4, HTC’s One A9, and the Samsung Galaxy S5 and older, have expandable memory for an array of microSD cards. 

After installing the proper card to your device, go to Settings > Apps (or Application Manager for Samsung devices), tap on an app, scroll down, and select Move to SD Card for ones that take up the most space.

However, many newer Android devices, such as the Galaxy S6 and Nexus 6P/5X, do not have microSD slots, but there are alternative methods.

First, you’ll need to identify what’s taking up the most space: go to Settings > Storage > Applications, where you’ll be able to select applications and clear data and/or cache. Note that you will have to re-log in to these apps. If it’s not clear what’s taking up the most space, apps like DiskUsage and SD Maid can clear cached data.

If you go to Settings > Storage, you can select Cached data to clear it all at once.

Another option is to use an Android-compatible external drive, such as SanDisk’s Ultra Micro USB flash drive. It allows you to instantly store and back up photos as soon as you take them.

Do you have any other methods to restore your smartphone? Leave a comment and let us know.

Source: BuzzFeed