How Do I Get More Storage On iPhone?

If you’re running out of storage on your iPhone, is there a way to get more?

Wondering how you get more storage on iPhone? That’s a question many people have. A lack of storage usually arises the longer you own your iPhone. Why? Because the longer we own our iPhones, the more data that usually accumulates on it – especially in the form of photos and videos, which are two of the biggest storage hogs on any smartphone.

So can you get more storage on your iPhone? The bad news is you can’t increase the storage capacity of your iPhone, but the good news is you can do things that free up storage space on your iPhone.

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First the bummer: the storage space in an iPhone can’t be expanded. iPhones, like virtually all smartphones, don’t have swappable hard drives, so you can’t upgrade your iPhone to increased storage after you buy it.

In other words, if the iPhone you buy has 128GB of storage, it will always have 128 GB of storage. The only way to get more internal storage on an iPhone is to buy a new one with more storage space.

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How much storage space you need in your iPhone depends on what you use it for. If you shoot a lot of videos or take a lot of photos, the more storage space the better. But if you just use your iPhone for web browsing, light app usage, emails, and texts, you could probably get away with the entry-level storage option on most iPhones (64GB or 128GB, usually).

However, if you can afford it, it’s always best to buy the next storage level up after you’ve decided what you need. This means if you think you need 128GB it’s better to buy the 256GB iPhone as that gives you a lot of wiggle room in case your calculations were wrong regarding how much space you need.

But it’s not always better to buy an iPhone with more storage than you think you’ll need if you upgrade your iPhone every year or two. That’s because if you upgrade your iPhone that often, you can quickly “upgrade” the amount of storage in an iPhone that better suits your needs.

Yet, if you keep your iPhone for 3 or more years before upgrading, it’s usually worth it to get the most storage possible.

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While you can’t add more storage to your iPhone, you can free up storage space on your iPhone. This means that you delete unneeded data from your iPhone, which leaves you space for more, newer, data.

Which data you delete is up to you, however, frequent storage hogs come in the form of games, which can take up gigabytes of space on your iPhone. To check how much space an app takes up, go to Settings > General > iPhone storage.

There you’ll see how much storage the app itself, and the data it contains takes up. You’ll then have the option to deter the app and its data, or just offload the app, which will delete it, but keep its data.

Another tip to free up storage is to delete your old Messages that you no longer need. The Messages app can contain gigabytes of texts and any videos or photos sent via text. If you no longer need these, it’s best to delete the messages. You can also set the messages app to automatically delete messages and attachments older than 30 days or 1 year. To do this, go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages and switch it from “forever” to 30 days or 1 year. Just remember to save any messages attachments you want to keep first.

Have an iPhone already? Check out where downloads go on iPhone! Also, be sure to check out ALL the iPhone 13 & iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 13 Pro & iPhone 13 Pro color options! And here’s what you need to know about iPhone 13 Pro Cinematic Mode! And here’s How To Backup iPhone To iTunes On A PC!

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Michael Grothaus

Apple expert and novelist, Michael Grothaus has been covering tech on KnowYourMobile for the best part of 10 years. Prior to this, he worked at Apple. And before that, he was a film journalist. Michael is a published author; his book Epiphany Jones was voted as one of the best novels about Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly. Michael is also a writer at other publications including VICE and Fast Company.