If you use your iPad or iPhone for music, photos or other media storage, you may have seen the message “Not enough space. You can manage your storage in Settings”. The only solution to such an error is to free up space on the device. Let’s look at how best to do this.

What is using up the storage on your iPad or iPhone?

Before you start deleting photos or apps in order to free up space, it is a good idea to check the storage usage of different applications to identify the real culprits. To see apps and their storage consumption, follow the steps below:

• Open Settings
• Go to General > Usage

You will see the storage section. The listing is in order of space used from highest to lowest so the apps that occupy more storage space are listed first. Note down the apps that can be removed to free up space.

If you use Deezer or other streaming services, you may notice that such apps seem to be using an inordinate amount of data. Considering most music is streamed through these apps, and not downloaded, this should not be the case. As a workaround you can try going into the app and logging out and logging in again or if this doesn’t work, delete the app and then download it again.

Remove unwanted apps

We are all guilty of downloading free apps and then forgetting all about them. Most apps take up a relatively small amount of space but when you add up all these free (or paid) apps, you will be surprised how much valuable storage space they may be taking up. Check for any apps that you don’t use and uninstall all of them.

1. Go to the Home screen
2. Find the icon of the app that you want to remove
3. Press and hold the app icon for a few seconds. All apps icons will wobble and a small cross will appear on every app icon (apart from those that cannot be removed such as photo app)
4. Tap the cross on the app icon you want to remove
5. When asked for confirmation to delete the app, tap on Delete

Similarly you can also delete games that you do not play anymore. This can free up a lot of space, particularly if game data has been stored on your device.

Delete Unwanted Music

An audio file can take up a few KB or MB of space. If you have a big collection of songs on your iPad or iPhone, you may need to perform a cull every once in a while. You can selectively delete songs that you don’t listen to.

1. Open the Music App
2. In song list view, swipe from right to left on any song to delete it

If you are loathe to delete any music files then you can concentrate on the video files which take up a lot more space.

Delete Videos from iPhone or iPad

Videos occupy quite a bit of storage space. You can free significant amounts of space by deleting unwanted videos. To do so:

1. Open the Video app
2. In the list view, swipe from right to left on any video to delete it

Delete Photos or sync with iCloud/ iTunes more often

With digital photo technology readily available we tend to take multiple photos with a view to editing later on. The fact of the matter is that people rarely do this editing and masses of duplicate photos end up taking up valuable space, whether on the device or in cloud storage. It is important to develop a habit of editing and culling photos frequently. You can do this directly on the device or after syncing to iPhoto or whatever program you use on your mac or PC.

When you sync your photos to your computer or cloud storage, make sure you delete the originals from your iPad or iPhone after ensuring that the copy is safely uploaded to dropbox, iCloud or whatever storage system you use.

If you don’t want to delete any music files, videos or photos, you can also transfer them to cloud storage and then delete them from your iPad.

The best way to keep you device clutter free is to do regular housekeeping and don’t let unused apps or media take up valuable storage space