How to free up up to 5 gigabytes on iPhone and iPad without deleting anything

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

It sounds unlikely, and you probably came here to find out what this divorce is and write an angry comment. I hasten to upset (or please) you - there is no deception in the title.

Attentive readers will remember one of the iOS 9 chips that was heard during the release of the new mobile OS. We are talking about the auto-cleaning function - the system independently removed various garbage and even applications from the drive if there was not enough free space to download the update file.

This semi-magical feature allows you to free up to 5 gigabytes of free space, depending on the amount of storage and the number of installed applications. An unfortunate drawback is that only the system itself can initiate autovacuum, the user cannot influence this in any way. However, there is one trick …

iOS removes junk from your iPhone or iPad when you need space for something important, like buying content from the iTunes Store. Music and games are not suitable due to their small size, films remain. Do not be afraid, you will not have to buy anything, we will do without it.

Go to "Settings" → "General" → "Using storage and iCloud" and check the amount of free space. On my iPad it is almost nonexistent, only a little over 300 megabytes are available.

Open the iTunes Store and go to the "Movies" section. We choose some long, long movie. For example, "The Lord of the Rings".

Make sure that the selected movie has a much larger volume than the available free space (in my case - 6, 75 GB with 313 MB available), click on "Rent".

iOS will warn you about the lack of free space and will offer to delete something through the settings. We press "OK".

We wait about a minute and check the amount of free space. I got 1, 2 GB free. Magic? You can say so.

Now about the nuances. The money from the account can be debited only if you have enough money and enough free space. And the number of free gigabytes depends on how many applications are installed. The more apps, the more cache and temporary files iOS can remove. On a 16GB iPhone, I ended up with about 2GB, which is average, but it can go as high as 5GB. If you have a completely empty iPhone and few applications, the result will not be so impressive - about 300-500 MB.

Show off in the comments how much space you've freed up!