If you want to update your iPhone with latest iOS 8.0 version by Apple, your first concern will be regarding available space in your iPhone and you will ve to clean your iPhone storage to get more space. Apple does not allow micro-SD cards as external storage with its any iPhone and this becomes a real big issue for iPhone users especially if they have 8 GB or 16 GB iPhone.
The latest and biggest update of iOS 8 requires almost 6 GB space on your iPhone or iPad to install. So every user certainly will think twice regarding installing it or not especially because in many cases there is no chance to go back to older versions of iOS 7.
I have iPhone 4S with 16 GB in my use, and when I tried to install the latest iOS 8.0 on my iPhone 4S, I got the less space message while I tried to download the update. With so many appreciation of iOS 8 and its wide acceptance by iPhone users, I decided to install iOS 8.0 on my iPhone 4S after cleaning my iPhone storage to get some extra space.
Here are the steps which I took to get the required space.
Check out your usage
Before you even begin to delete anything from your device, check out how much space you have used. It will be the first step to identify what things or apps can be deleted from your device. This will give you an idea of how much storage space is being used by each app on your specific device. To check out usage of your device you don’t have to do too much, for this you have to go to Settings -> General -> About. This will show you how much space is available in your iPhone. This will also give you an idea about how many videos, songs, photos and apps you have. You can delete those which consumed the most space by go to Settings -> General -> Usage.
Delete Unused games
Usually the gaming apps do not take many space on your device, but there are some 3-D graphics gaming apps that can take up more than 1 GB of space. Because of the 3-D graphics these gaming apps take more space than the other games. A part from these 3-D graphics games, some old games are on your phone which you have either finished or don’t play very often. Candy Crush? Angry Birds? 2048? Might one of these, Go and delete them. You can delete these games within Manage Storage by tapping on the app.
Delete Photo Stream
If you have enabled Photo Stream on your iPhone, or any other device disable it very quickly. Because this Photo Stream can be enabled by default, this would grab about 1 GB space of your device. Photo Stream keeps up to 1,000 of the latest pictures you take and save them across your devices,it means if you have Photo Stream enabled on your Phone, you are just copying your last 1,000 photos in your Camera Roll. You can check out the Photos & Camera app in the Usage section to see just how much space it is grabbing.
If you use your Photo Stream as a backup of your device’s photos, then make sure to save those images locally on your computer and any other save places. After saving these photos in your computer you can delete them from the Photo Stream and save the storage space on your iPhone.
Beware of apps internal downloads
Some apps look small by size by themselves but can store a lot of files. For example, the Spotify app apparently gets 56 MB space of your device. But if you have a large number of music downloaded to your device, the app takes unreasonable amount of space. For example for 800 songs downloaded, the app takes about 2 GB of your iPhone storage which is quite a big space especially when you have no option for external memory. You can check any app icon in Manage Storage to see the app size versus the downloads within it.
Set your messages to automatically expire
You can now automatically delete older messages with iOS 8 but If you want going back through old messages, don’t do this. If you really want those conversations after a year, this automatically option is easier than manually deleting old threads. For this you have to go to Settings > Messages. Under Keep Message, than select time period( 30 days or 1 year).
You can also adjust the time limit of your video and audio messages. You can set a deadline that how much time will it take to delete them. You can set them to expire after two minutes or never.
Use Google+ or Dropbox for storing photos
Best way to get more space of iPhone Storage is to use appropriate cloud services for your multimedia
You would definitely not want to take all your photos off your phone and you don’t have to do this. But you can save a large amount of your iPhone Storage by having your photo library back up automatically to a cloud storage system.
We recommend you to use the Google+ app because it allows you to store unlimited amount of photos of 2048 by 2048 pixels and 15 minute long videos as well. Not only that there one is more amazing thing about Google+ is that it’s absolutely free.
To store your unlimited amount of Photos on Google+ app you don’t have to do too much. All you have to do is download the App and make a Google account. After making the account on Google select Auto Back-Up under the app’s Settings. But before doing that be sure to select to have it back up Over Wi-Fi Only so you will not be charged for data use.
Only save HDR photos
Have you ever noticed that your device save two images of the same photo. Yes this happens when you are using HDR (High Dynamic Range) for your iPhone. See the difference here. This happens when HDR on Auto or is selected as always On. You have to select the photo from HDR and normal.I think HDR photo is better than the normal one so if you choose to shoot in HDR, then you don’t have to keep the normal photo. For this you have to go to Settings > Photo & Camera. Scroll to the bottom and deselect Keep Normal Photo.
Sign up for a streaming music service
Now a days you don’t have to store all your songs on your device. You can save a large amount of your iPhone storage by downloading the albums you want, and streaming the rest.
If you are dedicated to iTunes, just sign up for iTunes Match. For just $25 per year, you will have every track in your iTunes library via the cloud. By tapping on the cloud icon you can download any song or album directly to your phone.
Remove Watched Videos
HD videos take huge amount of your iPhone storage, each HD video file can range from 500MB to several GB. Delete a movie or a video podcast just after you have watched it. To remove a movie you just have to slide it to the left and hit Delete. Alternatively, you can hit Edit in the top right, tap on the minus symbols beside each one, and Delete. This will not hurt you too much because you can download or stream it again whenever you want.
Explore the “Other” section on iTunes and restore your phone
The “Other” category, which is shown in your iPhone storage on iTunes, includes emails, music and web-browsing data. At times the files can get corrupted and grab more space than they should. The most easy way to clear this shortage of space is to back up your data and restore your phone on iTunes.
