How to Check and Free Up Storage on Your iPhone

Short answer: Open Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see a list of apps by the space they use, plus any storage recommendations your iPhone offers. Tap an app to offload or delete it.^1,2,3

How this guide was made: SpecCairn did not check a particular iPhone for this guide. The steps follow Apple Support; labels can vary with the iOS version.

Step-by-step: check your storage

Open Settings and tap General.¹
Tap iPhone Storage (on an iPad, iPad Storage).^1,4
If storage recommendations appear, tap Show All to review them.²
Scroll the list of apps to see how much space each uses, and tap an app for details.¹

Free up space

Free up space
Option	What it does
Offload App	Frees the app’s storage but keeps its documents and data.³
Delete App	Removes the app and its related data.³
A recommendation	Read it, then tap Enable, or tap it to review content you can delete.²
Videos and apps	If you see Storage Almost Full, Apple suggests removing content such as videos and apps.²

Before you delete anything, make sure the photos, videos and files you want to keep are backed up or copied somewhere else.⁵

What the categories mean

Photos: photos and videos in the Photos app.⁶
Messages: messages and their attachments.⁶
iCloud Drive: iCloud Drive files you’ve downloaded to the phone.⁶
Other and System: Apple describes Other as items such as Siri voices, fonts and caches, and System as space used by the operating system.⁶

Why the numbers change

When storage runs low, your iPhone frees space by itself, removing things you can download again, like unused apps and temporary files.⁷ Apple also notes that cached and temporary data might not count as usage.¹

Device storage vs iCloud storage

iPhone Storage is the space on the phone. iCloud storage is separate space in the cloud, used for things like backups and iCloud Photos.⁴
To check iCloud, open Settings, tap your name, tap iCloud, then Storage or Manage Storage.⁴

Check from a computer

On a Mac, select the iPhone in the Finder; on a Windows PC, use the Apple Devices app or iTunes. A bar shows storage by content type. These tools count cached files as Other, so for exact numbers use Settings on the iPhone.⁸

FAQ

Will offloading an app delete my documents?

No. Apple says offloading keeps the app’s documents and data; deleting the app removes them.³

Why doesn’t my iPhone match my computer?

The Finder and the Apple Devices app count cached music, videos and photos as Other, so the totals can differ.⁸

About this guide

Not affiliated with Apple. See the methodology.

Scope: iPhone and iPad storage as described by Apple Support. Labels can vary with the iOS version. Research-based; not device-tested.