Internal storage space can be easily occupied and restricts you from downloading and/ or importing important documents+ photos. If that wasn’t enough it also slows down our phone which ends up in the frozen screen and corrupted information. To avoid all these here’s what you can do:

For Android:

1. Clear Cache.

Junk files are saved in internal storage by default. To delete them:

You can just go to settings and open storage. Find the option to Clear Cache Data and tap on it. Confirm your decision by tapping on Okay in the dialogue vox when it pops up.

Or if you don’t want to delete them all you can just go to settings and tap on an individual app. Every app has its own cached data. They can be safely deleted by tapping on Clear cache option.

2. Visit the Downloads folder and clear unwanted files.

Various apps download different files that aren’t really necessary and even at times malicious for the device. Go to downloads or find the downloads folder in file explorer. Tap and hold any one of the files to select it. Checkboxes will appear. You can either select certain files or use the select all option to delete them all. If you’re not in a hurry you can sort them by size and/ or date and delete only those ones that are taking up the most space or are useless.

3. Back up photos and dump the useless ones.

With the use of google photos, you can upload a whole folder at a time. Not only that once you have backed up all the necessary photos you can let google photos automatically delete them. To do this you have to:

Open the Google photos app. On the top left corner, you will find a three-line menu button, tap n that. Find Free up device storage amongst the options and tap on that. The app itself will let you know how many photos are backed up and ask for your permission to delete them from the device. Just tap okay when the dialogue box appears and it will do the work for you.

An important point to remember is that some of us use the low-resolution cloud storage to back up photos. This will back up your photos with a lower resolution. While the photos with original quality will be deleted in the previous method. If you don’t want to end up with pixelated photos then be careful from the start. Just use high-quality resolution on cloud or store it somewhere else.

4. Google Maps takes up more storage than you think!

If you updated your phone recently you may have noticed that google map now allows you to navigate while you’re offline. You can do this by downloading a map section with both the directions and searching option. However, it has a cost. Depending on the size of the area it may even take up to a whole gigabyte from your precious phone storage. It takes up a lot of space. You can check how much storage space is taken. To do this open the app and just tap on the three-line menu option in the top left corner. Then tap offline. You can find the map size right below each map. Select the maps you don’t need any more or can do without by holding onto it for a few seconds and delete it. This will save you a lot of space.

5. Least-used apps (or the ones you haven’t used in the past few weeks) should be deleted.

It doesn’t take much to download a few apps on your phone. Especially when there are some really unique and useful apps out there. Nowadays we can even download apps on our phones from our laptops, pc, or macs. However, because we don’t think twice about our decisions the outcome is serious. A slow phone with low storage that hangs up every few minutes. Obviously deleting every other app that arent being used is the most logical choice. However, we cant always do that. So, to narrow down our choices we can use App tracker, App usage and Quality time. But remember, only you can be the best one to know about yourself, in this case, it’s your phone. Just go to play store or app drawer (from the browser) and find the apps you don’t use or need anymore. Or you can manually find your apps and delete them one by one. See a seldom-used app you could do without? Tap it, then tap Uninstall.

Last but not least: Use third-party apps

Use apps like CCleaner and Cleanmaster to keep your phone safe and sound while they do all the work for you!! A lot of other similar apps can be found in google store.

FOR iPhone:

1. Use High Efficiency:

Apple has a new option for your iPhones called High Efficiency. It will basically compress your photos and saves in a format called HEIF or High-Efficiency Image Format instead of JPEG. In this way, the photos take up to 80% smaller space than the original photo. Even the videos will take lesser space with a format named HEVC or High-Efficiency video coding. According to Apple, you can actually save twice as many photos and/ or videos with this option. However, remember that it will only work with models such as iOS 11 or iPhone 7 and above. Also, you cant share the photos with other normal phones without changing it back to its original form. To use this, go to Settings > Camera > Formats > and select “High Efficiency” instead of “Most Compatible”.

2. Delete photos and videos in Messages

If you share a lot of photos and video along with your messages, there’s bad news. All those media files have been saved to your Photos app. Not only that they’re not even the original photos. Every time you share a photo a duplicate version of it gets saved to your phone. To remove all these, you have to manually go to each conversation and delete them. After you’ve selected the photos to find the delete option on the lower-left corner of your screen and move them to trash. Click on delete message to confirm when the dialogue box pops up and done!

If your using models such as iOS 11 it’s even easier. Just follow this simple path- (Settings > General > iPhone Storage). Scroll down to find “Review Large Attachments” and tap on it. You will now find a whole list of all the media files you sent with your messages. Select edit and choose the ones you want to delete and delete them.

3. Automatically delete by setting messages:

Not only the attached media files but even the messages themselves can take up your storage space. Messages kind of just stay in your phone for ever if you don’t delete them yourself. Unless you set them to expire. Your messages can delete them-selves every 30 days or if you want to be on the safe side every year. To do this go to Messages in Settings and right below History, you will find Keep Messages. This will allow choosing a period of time for your phone to keep the messages. This can also be used for audio messages.

4. Delete (Offload) unused apps

In iOS 11, there’s another handy storage-saving feature called “Offload Unused Apps”. Head into Settings > General > iPhone Storage and then click “Enable” under the feature.

Once it’s turned on, your iPhone will delete unused apps whenever the storage is low automatically. So, the apps that arent very active will deleted depending on how seldom you use them. Because this leaves the app’s data intact you can just resume from your previous position whenever you re-download it. How much easier can this get!

5. Delete cache:

A lot of apps save some unnecessary cookies or cache on your phone. You can, however, delete them without any worries as they don’t contribute to your phones experience at all. A lot of the files even saves photos, GIFs and Vines in its “Media storage” section. Regularly visit Media storage and clear it if you want a healthy phone.