In the past couple of years, Apple has begun to pay more attention to the problem with a lack of memory on the iPhone. Last year, the base version of the iPhone contained 32GB, and in this - already 64GB. But many of us still have phones with 16GB of memory. To help us, Apple continues to add features to iOS that help to free up memory.

How to free up memory on your iPhone with iOS 11


IOS 11 also has such features. The new version of the system uses the HEIF format for photos and HEVC for video. Both formats help save 50% of memory while retaining quality. In addition, iOS 11 has a whole section with recommendations for memory management. If your iPhone runs out of memory, try the tips below to free up memory on iPhone.

How to free up memory on iPhone with iOS 11


1. Automatically download applications


The first thing you should do is find the applications that you can remove. You can do this manually in Settings -> Basic  -> iPhone Storage (or iPad ). There you can see which applications take up the most memory.

iOS 11 can do this automatically. At the top of the iPhone Storage section, just enable the Unload unused function.

This function keeps track of which applications you use often, and which ones do not come in weeks/months. When iOS notices that the device is running out of memory (for example, while the 4K video is being recorded), the system automatically deletes applications that you have not used for a long time. The application itself is deleted, and you can download it again in one click. All your documents and data from this application will be saved on your device. When you re-download the application, they will be restored.

2. Follow the new recommendations in the repository


Open a new section of the  Recommendation in the iPhone Storage. There you will find tips on how to free up memory on your device. Here everything is listed: from deleting the attached files in iMessage to deleting old movies in iTunes.

3. Delete unnecessary photos and videos


Since the iPhone has excellent cameras, we all have the habit of taking too many photos. This is an excellent strategy for the photographer - the more pictures you take, the more chances to get a great photo. But the problem is that sometimes we forget to delete not very good photos. On one amazing photo in Instagram, there are 10 unsuccessful.

Flip through your photos and delete all unnecessary. You will surely find a few dozen photos or screenshots that you can delete, and free up several gigabytes.

4. Use the iCloud library or Google Photos library


When you delete unnecessary photos from the device, you will need to save the copies of the remaining ones, and then delete them as well. The best way to do this is with the iCloud Mediathek.

You can enable this function in Settings  ->  Photo. But, if you have more than 5GB of photos, you will need to buy an iCloud plan at 50GB / month for $ 0.99 / month.

When your photos are uploaded to iCloud, you can only store recent photos on your device. To do this, in the Photos section in Settings, select Storage optimization on the iPhone.

If you do not want to spend money on iCloud, you can download an unlimited number of photos for free in Google Photos (but they will be compressed). After uploading to Google Photos, you can also enable automatic deletion of photos from the device.

5. Uninstall application content


In the iPhone Storage section, you'll see which applications take up the most memory. In some cases, their data will be the cause. If you have downloaded movies in iTunes or Netflix, they continue to be stored on your device.

This applies to podcasts, audiobooks, etc.
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You need to go into such applications and manually delete the downloaded files. If applications like Twitter or Facebook take up more than 1GB, you should delete them and reinstall them.

6. Clear the Safari cache


In Settings, go to the Safari section and click Clear history and site data. This will delete the entire history, cookie and cache from websites.

7. Remove the "live part" of Live  Photos


When you make Live Photo, you also save three seconds of video and audio. Live Photo is a great feature, but it's not very useful and takes up a lot of space.

Use the Lean application, which costs $ 1.99. Removing the "live part" from 4 photos can free up as much as 12MB. If you do this with a hundred photos, then easily release a couple of gigabytes.

8. Clear the folder with recently deleted photos


After you manually delete photos, do not forget to delete them from the Recently deleted folder. This is how you free up memory.

In the Photos app,   go to the Recently deleted album. Select all photos and delete them.

9. Automatically delete old messages


If you do not like to reread old messages, you can configure their automatic deletion. Go to Settings  ->  Messages  ->  Leave messages and select 30 days or  1 year.

10. Delete attachments to messages


Go to Messaging, click Edit, and delete the old dialogs that contain many files.

Or you can go into a specific dialog, click on the picture above and view all the attached files. Select a photo / video and click "delete".

11. Remove additional Siri voices


If you downloaded additional Siri voices unnecessarily, it would be nice to remove them. One voice can occupy up to 900MB.

Go to  Settings  ->  General  ->  Universal Access  ->  VoiceOVer  ->  Speech  and select an unnecessary voice.

Then click  Edit, swipe by voice and click  Remove.

12. Optimize the Apple Music store


If you use Apple Music, you can adjust how much memory your library will occupy.

Go to  Settings  ->  Music and select  Storage Optimization. You can choose from 4GB to 64GB (depending on the amount of memory on the device). When you reach the limit, iOS will start deleting music that you have not listened to for a long time.

13. Clear your iTunes cache


If you watch movies in iTunes, the application accumulates a cache. It is not visible to the user and can occupy up to several gigabytes. To clear the cache, you can restart the device. Hold down the Home and Sleep / Wake buttons (on the iPhone 7 it's the Volume Down + Sleep / Wake button) until the device reboots.

14. Disable automatic media download from WhatsApp


If you are in a group chat in WhatsApp, then you get a lot of videos and images. By default, WhatsApp downloads all files and saves them to you in Photos. Go to Settings -> Chats and calls and turn off the Save incoming files function.

15. Try downloading a huge application or movie


This method may not work for you. If you run out of memory, go to the App Store and download the application that takes up more memory than is available on your device. The same can be done by downloading movies in HD from iTunes.

When you do this, iOS will automatically clear the cache and unnecessary files to free up memory. After a while, cancel the download.

Coming soon: storing messages in iCloud


This feature is not yet available on iOS 11, but we expect to receive it in a couple of weeks with the update of iOS 11.1. The iMessages feature in iCloud will automatically download all of your messages to the vault. You can delete old dialogs from your device without losing the data. When you enter the dialog, messages will instantly be downloaded from iCloud. If you have been using your device for several years, messages can take up to 5GB of memory.
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Last option: reset device settings


If the "System" takes up too much memory, there is an option to reset the device. Go to Settings  ->  General  ->  Reset and select  Erase content and settings.

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