Run out of iPhone storage? Change this setting to instantly free up space

If you’ve had your iPhone for a couple of years, chances are you will be struggling for storage space. 

With most people in constant communication and messaging multiple photos and videos to each other per day, it can be easier than you think to reach the iCloud storage limit.  

Despite models from iPhone 13 onwards coming with a minimum of 12 GB of storage, for anyone with an older iPhone model, it can be too easy to reach the miserly 5 GB free iCloud storage offered.

You might be tempted to succumb to Apple’s iCloud notifications and find yourself on an eye watering £6.99 per month plan for 2TB – just so you can fit everything you need into one place. 

Luckily, experts at Fonehouse have revealed an easy method to instantly free up storage space on your phone – simply by changing a message setting you can instantly reduce the amount of storage you use. 

While iPhone 13 models and onwards automatically come with a minimum of 12 GB of storage, older models only offer 5GB and users can reach the limit very quickly   

By default, your iPhone stores every message you send and receive which means your phone can be clogged with unnecessary storage. 

While this feature can be useful if you want to reminisce over conversations you had years ago, these messages can build up over time and clog your phone for no good reason. 

To activate the feature, unlock your iPhone, open the Settings app and scroll until you see ‘Messages’.

Tap the icon, and scroll through the subsection until you see the ‘Message History’.

You should then be able to click on ‘Keep Messages’, which will give you three options: 30 Days, One Year, Forever. 

The setting will automatically be on ‘Forever’, but you can pick whichever suits. If you tap one of the options, you will receive a popup asking if you want to delete older messages. 

You can then tap ‘Delete’ to free up your space and avoid having to pay extra for storage. 

You can revert these changes at any time. 

iPhone users should also be careful of WhatsApp adding unnecessary attachments to your phone. 

The app will automatically save photos, videos and voice notes unless told otherwise. 

To change this open WhatsApp, tap Settings, Tap Storage and Data, then go to Manage Storage to review and delete attachments individually.  

If you need to check how much space you have left on your iPhone, go to the Settings app, scroll to ‘General’ and click on ‘iPhone storage’. 

The master hack to free up iPhone storage: Go to settings > Click on Messages > Scroll to find Message History > Click on keep messages > Choose out of three options when to delete messages

The setting will tell you how much space you’re using and which applications are taking up the most storage to guide you on what you might like to delete. 

Another great way to free up storage is by removing duplicate photographs, the common problem can eat up storage but there is a simple way to fix this. 

First, open the photos app, go to ‘Albums’ and under the ‘Utilities’ section, tap ‘Duplicates’ and then tap ‘Merge’ next to your chosen photos to delete duplicates. 

If you want to delete the duplicates straight away, in the last step, tap the three dots in the top right corner and tap ‘Select All’ to merge all of the duplicates.