Running out of space on your iPhone? Here’s what you can do

Be it the downloading of new apps or saving too many pictures and videos, a smartphone user often battles with the problem of storage space. It's even more difficult for iPhones which don't have a microSD card slot for storage expansion. There are however some simple ways to free up space on iPhones without uninstalling apps and deleting pictures and videos.

The first and foremost is to check the storage space in your iPhone. Go to Settings options of the device, click on General and tap on Storage & iCloud Usage -- Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage. The number seen under 'Storage' is the amount of space used locally and the space that is still available.

The next thing that an iPhone user should do is to go to 'Manage Storage' option under the 'Settings' menu on their devices. This option will show the list of apps, using the storage space of your device in the descending order.

While browsing, if you see there are any lesser-used apps that are eating up too much of storage space, you may delete them. Deleting the apps will automatically increase or free up storage space.

Here are other ways by which you can manage storage on your iPhone:

iCloud Photo Library

Clear out old photos and videos. For other pictures and videos, use iCloud Photo Library. It is an easy way to free up space on your iPhone devices.

Enabling iCloud Photo Library on iPhone, instantly frees up a large amount of space on the devices.

Users must ensure that there is adequate storage space available on their iCloud storage.

To enable iCloud Photo Library follow the steps mentioned below:

• Tap on 'Settings' options of your iPhone

• Select 'Photos & Camera'

• Turn on 'iCloud Photo Library' option

• Ensure that Optimize iPhone Storage option is selected.

The feature will continue to save your photos and videos on your iPhone, but they will be in a smaller format. The full-resolution original photos are stored in iCloud.

Google Photos

iPhone users can use Google Photos features to save pictures and videos and keep storage space on their devices free. You unlimited storage space on Google Photos app.

Google Photos gives the option of creating albums. Though most smartphones come with Google Photos pre-installed, those who do not have the app on their devices can download it from the App Store.

How to use Google Photos

• Go to Google Photos on your iPhone

• Click on the 'Settings' option

• Turn ON or enable 'Back up & sync toggle'

• Enter your Google account if and when asked

iPhone users may also try other services like Dropbox, Amazon, ShoeBox or IceCream that offers unlimited videos and photos storage free of cost.

Offload apps eating up storage:

There may be certain apps on your iPhone that over the time has been eating up a lot of storage space. Users can check such apps following the steps mentioned above and clear data by 'offloading' apps. This will free up storage used by the app but it will keep its documents and data.

Delete old message threads:

A major portion of storage space is consumed by iMessage and text messages on your iPhone. If you are not following the practice of deleting irrelevant messages, start it right away to free storage space on your iPhone.