Flowers bloom every spring, temperatures go up and the birds begin their singing – everything looks nice. Now imagine that you got an alert saying that your phone is running out of storage. Everyone of us faced such situation once. You installed a game for your trip, took hundreds of blurry photos of your pet, and there it is – the phone lags, and you get that terrifying "Storage Almost Full" message while trying to save a meme. Time to fix this.
Luckily, you do not need to buy anything or subscribe to any service to do it. All that you need is something you already have, but you may have just forgotten – the tools you already have in your devices. In this article, we will conduct a total wipe using only the tools that are available for free in Apple, Google and Microsoft products. This procedure is more about being a digital janitor than a geek knowing everything. So, grab something to eat and let's begin starting from the most popular devices – smartphones.
First of all, it will be iPhone since it offers you the easiest way to find your digital garbage. Launch the Settings application and navigate to "General" -> "iPhone Storage". There you will see the list of applications that take up your storage space. Enable "Offload Unused Apps" right away as it will remove the app from your phone, but will keep the documents and other files.
When you are there, scroll down and check your Photos app storage. If you use iCloud Photos feature, enable the "Optimize iPhone Storage" option. Thus, your phone will store only the small copies of photos, and the big ones will be stored in the cloud. If you are a fan of messages, go to Settings app -> Messages and change the "Keep Messages" parameter from "Forever" to "One Year" – you probably do not need those texts from your middle school days.
And now, Android users, do not think that you were spared as Google has its own magic tool for fixing this problem. You need to launch Google Files application, which usually comes preinstalled on Samsung, Pixel and Motorola smartphones. There is "Clean" tab at the bottom where you will see your personal assistant inviting you to remove the digital garbage. It will detect the duplicates, old screen recordings, and memes that you have already shared. Tap the "Delete" button for each section to free up the storage space.
Another useful Android feature is the "Free up space" option that you can see in your Google Photos settings. This operation will delete the photos that were already backed up to the cloud. It might seem scary at first, but trust the process as your memories are still safe there. Also, you can clear cache of your social media apps like TikTok or Instagram as they usually store a lot of data that just slows your phone.
Now let's move to bigger devices – laptop or Chromebook. If you are a Windows user, you will need the built-in Storage Sense feature. Launch the System settings, go to Storage tab and turn it on. Storage Sense will automatically delete the temporary files and empty the recycle bin if it needs to. It is like having a robot maid that will do it for you automatically.
Mac and Chromebook users, however, will have to do it manually. In case of Mac, launch the Apple menu, choose "System Settings" -> "General" -> "Storage" and click on the recommendations provided by Apple such as "Store in iCloud" and "Empty Trash Automatically". In case of Chromebook, you are using mostly cloud-based storage, so you can sort the files in your local Downloads folder. Delete those old PDFs and screenshots that fill up your drive.
Now one step that is often forgotten but very important to protect your accounts – password hygiene. You probably used the same password for three gaming accounts, and this is a very bad idea from a security perspective. Luckily, Apple and Google offer you the built-in password managers that will check your weak and compromised credentials. Go to Settings app -> "Passwords" in case of iPhone and your Google Account Security settings in case of Android. It will generate a random and strong password and save it for you.
While we are talking about the security, let's remove the unnecessary permissions of the apps that you installed but do not use. Go to Privacy settings and check the list of applications that have access to your camera, microphone and location. Do you think that a flashlight app really needs your location information? Most likely it does not, so remove it. It will help you to protect your privacy and usually it saves your battery power as well.
And finally – your browser, in which you spend a lot of time on the Internet. Whether you use Chrome, Safari or Edge, you need to delete history and cookies. Go to your browser's settings and delete the cache and cookies from the last month. It will fix the issues with websites and get rid of those annoying ads that follow you everywhere. You will feel like you have a fresh mind again.
This whole procedure might take you about an hour if you focus on it. Maybe even two if you will be distracted by old pictures. But this is a very small price to pay for having a device that works when you need it. You do not need to be a tech genius to do these actions – you only need to know where to press the buttons. Also, performing this procedure once a year will help you to avoid the situation when you will need to perform a factory reset of your phone in panic. You should be proud of what you accomplished today!
So, plug in your charger, sit comfortably on your sofa and start pressing buttons. You will feel a huge satisfaction when you see that the storage bar goes down again to the healthy level. It is somehow strangely satisfying, like popping a bubble wrap, but for your hard drive. Your phone will work faster, your laptop will stop wheezing, and you will have some free space again.
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