What's my Iphone full of?

[trekker12]

I have an IPhone 5C. It was cheap two and a half years ago and now I've paid it off it's even cheaper as I'm effectively on a no contract sim only deal, which I like.

However, the phone is constantly full. I'm getting reminders it's full and spent two hours last night going through photos and apps to try to get above the magic 300mb of free storage in order to transfer what was left to iCloud (which I don't think I fully understand).

Having got rid of all non-essential apps and photos and videos there really isn't much of any use left. I've basically got Strava, Whataspp (from which I cleared all messages containing videos and photos) and the original Apple apps I can't remove Yet I only have 338.2MB of storage and have used 4.7GB.

4.7GB? What the hell is using 4.7GB? I assume when you delete stuff there is some residue - in fact I deleted an app then reinstalled it and it took up more space than the original app had so there is definitely residue somewhere.

How do I clear it and start again? I'm tempted to run a factory reset but I'm not sure that will actually do anything for the hard drive (or whatever the smartphone equivalent is called).

I know I'm supposed to buy the latest one every two years and keep throwing money at new tech but I'm not interested. I like the phone I've got and as long as it still works why should I?

[rusky]

I have an IPhone 5C. It was cheap two and a half years ago and now I've paid it off it's even cheaper as I'm effectively on a no contract sim only deal, which I like.

However, the phone is constantly full. I'm getting reminders it's full and spent two hours last night going through photos and apps to try to get above the magic 300mb of free storage in order to transfer what was left to iCloud (which I don't think I fully understand).

Having got rid of all non-essential apps and photos and videos there really isn't much of any use left. I've basically got Strava, Whataspp (from which I cleared all messages containing videos and photos) and the original Apple apps I can't remove Yet I only have 338.2MB of storage and have used 4.7GB.

4.7GB? What the hell is using 4.7GB? I assume when you delete stuff there is some residue - in fact I deleted an app then reinstalled it and it took up more space than the original app had so there is definitely residue somewhere.

How do I clear it and start again? I'm tempted to run a factory reset but I'm not sure that will actually do anything for the hard drive (or whatever the smartphone equivalent is called).

I know I'm supposed to buy the latest one every two years and keep throwing money at new tech but I'm not interested. I like the phone I've got.

If you go to settings and storage usage it will show where the usage is.

What I've seen is that apps retain a load of crap especially WhatsApp!

Also photos go to the bin that you then have to empty!

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

[Greenbank]

I have similar as I tend to buy second hand iPhones every 2 years for about £150. Right now I have an iPhone 5 (not a 5S) and it's getting near its end of life.

Settings -> General -> Storage & iCloud Usage -> Manage Storage

I see I have:

Used: 12.18GB
Available: 696.1MB

And it lists the apps in order of usage.

Adding up all of those app sizes gives 8472.4MB, so I guess almost 4GB is taken up by the phone Operating System itself.

Reminds me that it is probably time to upgrade. I can get a 32GB iPhone SE for ~£150 on eBay, possibly a 64GB version for not much more if I hunt around a bit.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Can't you empty the cache for each app?

[trekker12]

My point is that I hardly have any apps. When the phone was new, it could run plenty of apps, store video and photo and now as it aged I'm having to remove more and more just to keep it running. I've cleared out every cache and storage space I can find and yet I still only have 300ish MB.

Deleting and re-installing an app leaves a discrepancy in the amount of space which means the deleted app is still there somewhere. There's evidently several deleted apps I can't do anything with. I wondered if it's possible to clear out any temporary files or used storage space similar to Windows?

I guess not or Apple wouldn't be able to sell me a new phone every two years. I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint as well as spending habits - even if it's only a small step.

Perhaps a recon phone off Ebay is the answer. Presumably they have the advertised amount of storage space (apart from that required by the OS)?

[ian]

As mentioned, if you go to settings > general > iphone storage, it'll break down what is taking up the space (into broad media, apps, photos, mail, others) and then give a per-app breakdown.

Besides the apps themselves, stuff that builds up is messages, mail, photos, music, and media. Some of the standard apps take up a lot of space (as an example quick glance, Garag Band (never used – 1.56 GB)). You can offload any apps you don't use, or delete them entirely. In-app settings for your mail and message apps determine how long and how much history they retain. Clear the browser and reading list caches etc. (this makes up a lot of the mysterious 'other' category).

Four GB for a operating system is pretty much par for the course in 2018.

Phones with fewer than 16 GB are a bit of false economy these days, to be honest, especially if you plan to keep them for a good number of years (as I do). It's best to pay for a bit more headroom (contract phones typically shave here, they expect churn to newer models). I have a 64 GB of which I've used 45 (most of which is my music collection). It'll keep me going for another couple of years, I have no compulsion to buy a new phone every two years either. System and apps on mine take up 7.95 GB.

[rusky]

I would back up what you need, factory reset it then Install apps you need and see where you go from there.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

[Samuel D]

As mentioned, did you empty the trash after deleting the photos and videos? Otherwise the space is still used, and, I think, reported as used.

Then restart the phone for good measure.

[Kim]

I would back up what you need, factory reset it then Install apps you need and see where you go from there.

Absolutely.  It's a rare computer system that doesn't suffer from cruft, and it's certainly worth trying a clean install before replacing hardware.

If that doesn't help, the problem is likely to be bloat within the updates to the OS (and factory-installed apps) that have come along since the system was new.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Four GB for a operating system is pretty much par for the course in 2018.

Phones with fewer than 16 GB are a bit of false economy these days, to be honest, especially if you plan to keep them for a good number of years (as I do). It's best to pay for a bit more headroom (contract phones typically shave here, they expect churn to newer models). I have a 64 GB of which I've used 45 (most of which is my music collection). It'll keep me going for another couple of years, I have no compulsion to buy a new phone every two years either. System and apps on mine take up 7.95 GB.

My phone tells me it has only 4GB in total, of which the Android system occupies 10.62MB and 785MB is currently available. It's a few years old and was pretty cheap (I got it in exchange for a pair of panniers I'd been using for about 9 years) so I'm not complaining.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Browser is an app - and the cache for a browser can get pretty big.
What about email? do you use that from your phone? If so, the mails will be cached on the phone.
Messages, including various flavours of messenger, cache messages.

[Greenbank]

Browser is an app - and the cache for a browser can get pretty big.
What about email? do you use that from your phone? If so, the mails will be cached on the phone.
Messages, including various flavours of messenger, cache messages.

The Manage Storage settings page pointed to above accounts for cached content (web pages, photos, emails, messages, etc) they're counted in the storage used by that app along with the size of the app (if it isn't a core system app).

For me some examples are:-

Music is listed as 270.2MB
Messages 142.6MB
Mail is 132.1MB (I made a decision a year ago to stop getting email on my phone, I now only check it when at a computer, but I can get it via a website if urgent) - these emails from a few other accounts that I have that are hardly used

If you go into the individual app page it gives you a basic breakdown of the storage used. For Mail it simply says "Mail and Attachments 132.1MB". The app itself has no size as it is part of the OS.

For an app like Whatsapp (344.2MB in the main listing) I see:
App size: 98.1 MB
Documents & Data: 246.1MB

Safari (the browser) is a whopping 7.9MB (with no app size as it is a core system app) as I use Private mode for almost everything so it isn't caching anything. Looking at its details it says "Offline Reading List: 4.8MB" and "History 3.1MB". The former is from accidentally pressing the 'add to offline reading list' icon, and the latter is from when I end up using it in non-private mode.