Declutter your iPhone: Easy tips to clean up storage space

Are you finally ready for a proper cleaning? Not just swipe a few photos and hope for the best, but actually free up real space? If the answer is yes, you’re in the right place.

Below, we’ll break down how to clear storage on iPhone with simple tips, tools that work, and a few tricks we use ourselves to actually keep things clean.

How to clear storage on iPhone

We always recommend starting with one simple move: figure out where the waste is. Before you delete anything, head to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. Give it a second to load – it’ll show you exactly what’s eating up your space, broken down by category (Photos, Applications, Mail, iOS, so on).

This one screen can tell you a lot. Maybe it’s Photos hogging the most, or a game you haven’t opened in six months that’s taking up 5GB. Sometimes it’s Messages with years of videos stacked in your chats.

In this same screen, there should be a section called Recommendations. You’ll see options to offload unused apps, review large attachments, and delete them with a tap. It’s a super quick way to clear out a chunk of space. This is always our go-to starting point.

But if you don’t see any recommendations (or they weren’t enough to make a dent), that’s totally fine. Next, we’ll walk you through exactly how to clear storage on an iPhone step by step, across all the usual clutter zones.

1. Start with your photo & video library

For a lot of people, this is the best place to start. Photos and videos quietly eat up more space than almost anything else on your iPhone. Between duplicate shots, similar photos, random screenshots, and a few dozen 4K videos you forgot about, your media library is probably the best candidate for decluttering.

Sure, you could scroll through your Photos app and start deleting things manually… but unless you’ve got an entire afternoon to burn, that’s not the best move.

Yes, Apple does give you some help – the Duplicates folder in the Photos app can automatically flag and merge (well, delete the extras) for you. But honestly? We usually find it underwhelming. It takes a while to even show up, since your iPhone has to finish indexing your entire photo library first. And as a few folks have pointed out on Reddit, the option might not appear at all if your phone hasn’t finished that process in the background.

Even when it does work, it only catches exact matches. So if you’ve got near-identical shots (think slightly different angles), it won’t flag them. That’s why we usually skip straight to a third-party app that handles this way better.

Recently, we’ve been using a free app called Clever Cleaner: AI CleanUp App – and honestly, it’s been solid. It’s fast and actually helps clear a ton of clutter. Here’s how to use it:

1. Download free Clever Cleaner on App Store: https://www.cleverfiles.com/clever-cleaner/.
2. Open the app and head to the Similars tab.
3. Tap Smart Cleanup to let the app suggest images for deletion.
4. If you want to keep something, tap Restore before the cleanup.
5. Scroll through the list, review the suggested deletions, and Slide to delete. Confirm once, and the app takes care of the rest.

That’s it. Fast, easy, it’s honestly one of the best iPhone storage cleaner apps we’ve seen. Not only is it completely free and ad-free (!), but it also uses solid AI to catch similar images that the built-in Duplicates album misses.

On top of that, it comes with 3 other features designed specifically to declutter your Photos library:

• Screenshots – collects all screenshots for quick bulk deletion.
• Lives – converts Live Photos to stills to save space.
• Heavies – shows all files sorted by size, so you can delete the biggest space hogs first. Since iPhones don’t offer a built-in way to sort files by size, this feature is especially useful.

Video Tutorial 2. Offload or delete unused apps

This one might seem straightforward, but it matters more than most people think. After photos and videos, apps are usually the next biggest space-hoggers on your iPhone. And with apps, you’ve got a couple of options: you can either delete them completely or offload them to save space without losing your data.

Let’s go through the steps:

1. Open Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
2. Wait a few seconds for the list to load – apps will appear sorted by how much space they use.
3. Tap on any app to see the breakdown: App Size vs Documents & Data.
4. If you don’t use it and don’t need it, tap Delete App to remove everything.
   Want to keep the app’s data, but free up space? Tap Offload App instead.

If you go for offloading, the app stays right where it was – on your Home Screen, marked with a small cloud icon. Tap it anytime, and your iPhone will reinstall the app with all your data still intact. No setup, no lost settings – just like you never removed it.

The Offload Unused Apps option we mentioned earlier does exactly this, but automatically. Once it’s turned on, your iPhone will quietly offload apps you haven’t used in a while, especially when storage starts running low. Sounds convenient, and for many people, it is. But – not everyone’s a fan.

Some users, like here on Reddit, have shared stories about apps being removed way too aggressively. One person noted that their iPhone was offloading apps even with 60% free space. Others say apps they use monthly keep getting offloaded, which becomes a pain if you’re on slow data or no Wi-Fi.

So here’s the bottom line: this feature is useful, but if you really need specific apps, you might want to keep offloading manual.

3. Clear cache and app data (where possible)

This one’s less obvious. We already covered deleting and offloading apps, but you can free up a lot of space without removing anything. How? Clearing app cache.

Cache is just temporary stuff apps save to make things load faster – like videos you already watched, web pages you visited, or media a chat app preloaded. It’s useful, but it builds up fast. And unless you reset the app, most of it stays buried in your storage.

Take Safari, for example – it can quietly hold onto a few gigabytes of old browsing data, cookies, and cached files. You can wipe all that without losing anything important.

Here’s how:

1. Open iPhone’s Settings and go to Safari.
2. Tap Advanced > Website Data.
3. Tap Remove All Website Data.

If the button is grayed out, it either means there’s no data to clear or Content & Privacy Restrictions in Screen Time are blocking changes. You can fix that in Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.

You can also clear cache in other apps, just not from iPhone settings. Many apps (though not all) have their own cache-clearing options built into their in-app settings.

Here are a few popular examples:

• WhatsApp – Go to Settings > Storage and Data > Manage Storage to clear large files, forwarded media, and more.
• Telegram – Go to Settings > Data and Storage > Storage Usage.
• Snapchat – Settings > Account Actions > Clear Cache.
• Twitter – Settings > Accessibility, display, and languages > Data usage > Media storage / Web storage.
• TikTok / Instagram / Facebook – These don’t offer built-in cache clearing… but deleting and reinstalling them clears the bloat without affecting your account.

4. Tackle the files app and downloaded docs

With apps, caches, photos, and videos, you’re already hitting the heavyweights. For most people, that’s enough to reclaim a solid chunk of space. These are the top of the pyramid when it comes to storage use.

However, if you’ve already handled those and still need more room, it’s time to look at the Files app. This is where random stuff hides – PDFs you opened once, AirDropped videos you forgot about, downloads from Safari or any other app. All that clutter ends up here.

It doesn’t take long to check, so here’s how:

1. Open the Files app.
2. Tap Browse > On My iPhone.
3. Open the Downloads folder (or any other folder with app names).
4. Tap Select, choose what you don’t need, then delete it.

If you haven’t cleaned this out in a while, you’ll likely find files you didn’t even know were still on your phone. Easy win.

And by the way, unlike the Photos app, the Files app does let you sort by size. Just tap the three-dot menu in the top right and choose Sort By > Size. Makes it way easier to spot the biggest files and clear them out first.

Final words

Of course, there are other spots and little nooks to explore if you really want to squeeze out every last bit of storage, but the four areas we covered above will help any iPhone user. Whether you’re using the latest iPhone 16 Pro, a solid mid-range like the iPhone 13, or even an older device like the iPhone 11, these steps work across the board.

Sure, there are options like Optimize iPhone Storage if you actively use iCloud with Photos – great for decluttering without deleting anything. You can also move files to cloud services or use external drives. But those aren’t universal fixes.

That’s why we focused on features that are already built into your iPhone, plus a few standout apps to clean iPhone storage space that don’t require jumping through hoops or any subscriptions.

Try these once, and chances are you’ll never let your iPhone get cluttered again (or at least you’ll know exactly what to do to clean iPhone storage space fast).

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