On an Android phone or iPhone, head to Settings for your photos app. Plus, he points out that you’re looking at them on a screen that’s just about 6 inches.

“So you don’t see all the details of the image anyway,” Fisco says. For example, the iPhone 14 has a 12-megapixel camera but only what amounts to a 2.96-megapixel screen. He notes that high-end smartphones take pictures in much higher resolutions than their screens will support. You might think that doing so would result in blurry or grainy images, but that’s not necessarily true, Fisco says. Photo optimization on your smartphone stores full-resolution versions in the cloud while leaving smaller versions on your phone. With a tap, you can delete any unwanted offender or “off-load” it, which frees up space used by the app but keeps the user data and settings on the phone in case you choose to reinstall it at a later date. Photos and videos are common culprits, of course, but you may be surprised to learn how many gigabytes are being consumed by rarely used apps. This will bring up a small color-coded bar chart showing how much storage you’re currently using and what’s hogging that space.īelow the bar chart you’ll see suggestions for clearing space by, for example, optimizing photos (more on that later) or removing iMessages with large attachments.Īnd below that you’ll find a more detailed list, identifying all the apps and data on your phone and how much space they occupy.

On an iPhone, Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage Tap it to review a list of files, including older ones that you might be able to do without. Some Android phones have a “Free up space” button at the top of the main Storage screen. If you want to keep the app but reset it to a brand-new state, you can tap Storage > Clear data.

Or under “Apps,” tap the app’s name and then Uninstall to remove it from your phone.

For example, under “Audio,” long-press on one or more files and tap Delete. If you drill down into the category, you can delete individual files or data.

Clearing memory iphone