iPhone 7 Storage Full? Best Way to Free Up Space on iMessage and Others
Are you already running out of space on your local or iCloud storage in your iPad air or iPhone 7? If yes, then maybe it is time for you to check your Messages app and see how much the space it is using up. Your iPhone or iPad saves all the messages you received and sent by default. This means that all messages will be there forever, and can result to slow device performance, lagging, bugs, and what’s worse is your iPhone 6 & iPhone 7 storage will run out of space.
Check the Space Messages App is using
You can easily check how much space your Messages app is taking. From home screen, simply open the Settings app on your iPad or iPhone and tap General. From there, scroll down to Storage and iCloud Usage and tap Manage Storage. It will show you a list of all your apps as well as the amount of storage used.
Step 1: From home screen, open Settings app. Choose General.
Step 2: Tap Storage & iCloud Usage.
Step 3: Choose Manage Storage from the top.
Step 4: You will see the list of all apps installed on your device. Check how much space Messages app is taking up.
Deleting or Setting a Limit for Messages, Video Files as well as Audio Files
You can always prevent the Messages app from taking huge space. If you do not, it will surely take much bigger space on your iPhone 7 storage until you can’t download and update other apps. The trick is to set an expiration of old messages in order to prevent it from gathering up. Once the messages are old, Messages app will delete them right away.
However, you need to keep in mind that deleted messages will never be returned to you. If you do not want the Messages app to automatically delete your old messages with value, it may be better if you will simply delete the messages manually.
To modify the expiration date, simply open the Settings app and choose Messages. Tap Keep Messages option and select an expiry period. Your iPhone or iPad will not keep the messages forever anymore. You can choose to keep the messages for a year or 30 days only.
Simply follow these steps to automatically delete older messages.
Step 1: Open Settings app and tap Messages.
Step 2: Scroll down to Keep Messages.
Step 3: Choose either 1 year or 30 days. Simply tap again to confirm.
By default, Messages app deletes video and audio files automatically after two minutes of watching or listening to the files. This is to avoid taking a large space on your storage. Make sure that you confirm Expire options under Audio Messages and Video Messages set to “After 2 Minutes”.
Deleting Bulk Attachments
You can manually delete images in your conversation thread by simply pressing it for a long time and choosing “More”. You can select the messages you wish to delete and simply tap the trash can. Even if it is easy to do it, it takes a lot of time and you need to search through your conversations in order to find the messages you want to remove. By using the Attachments view, you can see all attachments at once without having to search throughout your thread.
Step 1: To use the Attachments view, tap “Details” at the top-right corner and you will see Attachments list at the bottom which contains all the attached photos.
Step 2: Long press the images and choose “Delete”.
Step 3: To delete bulk images, long press any image and choose “More”.
Step 4: Simply tap all the images you wish to delete and tap the trashcan to delete all these images all at once. This solution is faster than manually deleting the attachments.
Deleting Voicemail Messages
Voicemails can take a lot of space on your device especially if you are not deleting them. If you only have few, then it is not a problem. However, if you are receiving voicemails most of the times and you have a lot, it can be serious. You can delete voicemails individually.
Step 1: Simply go to the Phone app and tap the Voicemail icon.
Step 2: Look for the voicemails you wish to delete.
Step 3: Swipe left on the voicemail and tap Delete button.
Deleting All Conversation Threads
Image attachments are the main reason why Messages app can take a lot of space on your iPhone 7 storage. Deleting the text messages are not enough. But if your conversations are too long and you do not want to read them anymore anyway, it is best not to keep them and delete the whole conversation thread.
Text messages do not actually use a lot of space. What’re occupying your iPhone 7 storage are the attachments. However, even long conversations can take some space if the amount is huge enough.
You can easily delete whole conversation thread by swiping to the left and tapping Delete button. This will delete the entire conversations as well as all the attachments within. If you wish to delete many conversation threads at once, simply tap the Edit button and choose all the conversations. Simply tap Delete at the bottom.
Deleting Useless Apps
One of the things that we tend to forget is deleting useless apps on our device. Most of the games that we see on App Store only take 10MB to 50MB. However, some can be 500MB up to 1GB. If you have installed a lot of apps and you are not using them anyway, it is better to just delete them to make more space on your iPhone 6 storage. Letting your device breathe can increase its performance as well.
Simply check all the apps that you have and think if you are using them or not. You can always install them again anyway in case you want to play them again. If not, delete them to make enough space. To delete an app from home screen, simply tap and hold it until the icon juggles. Tap the X button on top of the app to remove it.
Before deleting your games, you may want to back them app. If you do not want to play the games anymore, just delete them to make more space on your device.
Removing Old Photos and Videos
If you will check your iPhone 7 Storage, the number 1 culprit on the list is probably Camera Roll. If you forgot to move all photos and videos from your device to your PC or Mac, you will suddenly see its huge size that is occupying your entire storage. When this happens, the performance of your iPhone is surely affected.
Cameras especially on the latest iPhones like iPhone 7 have higher quality which takes a lot of space whenever you take photos. If photos and videos are already old, it is time to delete or move them to your PC or Mac. This way, you do not have to worry about losing your photos. Make it a habit to transfer your photos on PC, Mac or make a backup in order to make more space on your device.
Deleting Some Music and Videos
Video and music files take a massive amount of space. If you are searching for the best way to make a space on your iPhone storage, the best way to do it is to delete some music and video files. If you purchased your music, videos and movies from iTunes, you can always re-download them again in the future.
iTunes lets you delete purchased music and movies files as you can re-download them again. This lets you get enough space on your device. Most of the apps that you purchased from iTunes can be downloaded again, so there will be no problem if you will delete some files that you do not need yet. If ever you wish to get the files back, simply download them again.
Use Google Photos App
To get more space on your iPhone 7 storage, you can always use Google Photos app which is available on App Store.
Step 1: Download Google Photos App from App Store.
Step 2: Once the installation is finished, open Google Photos app.
Step 3: Tap Settings from the left.
Step 4: Tap Free Up Space. You can allow Google Photos to delete photos by tapping Delete.
Now, the photos will be deleted permanently in Recent Deleted Album or will be deleted automatically after 30 days.
If deleting photos are not enough, check again in Storage & iCloud Usage which apps that are taking a lot of space of your iPhone storage. If the apps are not important anyways, you can delete them and reinstall in the future.