Most of us are locked down again and therefore have no excuse not to spring clean our gadgets.
Clouds are expensive. If you add up you and your families seemingly insignificant subscriptions to different clouds, then calculate the cost over 10 years, you'll be in for a shock. And this isn't going away - you'll still be paying when you're 80 unless you start improving your storage habits.
Here are 11 tips on clearing out your phone storage to avoid you having to upgrade to phones with triple the storage you used to need. I’m using the iPhone as my example, but the tips work for any brand of smartphone.
Check your storage. Even if it isn’t full yet, it’s still worth a spring clean. Go to Settings --> General --> iPhone storage where you can see how much you’ve used and what the worst offenders are. You may not remember downloading some film years ago, but it may still be sitting there taking up space.
Delete regularly. Instead of flicking through insta, take some time to delete. 18 shots of the kids jumping in the pool last summer trying to get the perfect one? You can delete 17 of them.
Apps – go through your apps like you should your wardrobe. Not used it in a year? Delete. You can always download it again if you need it.
Videos. If you need space urgently then deleting videos will gain you a lot of space rapidly. You'll never watch 4 videos of a firework display in 2017. To quickly find videos, go to Photos, click on the Albums folder at the bottom, then scroll down and select Videos. The longer the video, the more space it takes.
Trim. If you can’t bear to delete videos – shorten them. 20 minutes of the school play isn’t necessary when little Freddie had a 30 second appearance as sheep 4 right at the end.
WhatsApp. WhatsApp saves files that are sent to you so your camera roll might be full of funny memes and jokes that made you laugh but you didn’t necessarily want to keep forever. To turn this off auto go to WhatsApp Settings --> Click on Chats --> Switch off ‘Save to Camera Roll’
WhatsApp saves all the media you send or receive. So, if you sent a 2-minute video to 8 people, that video is stored 8 times in your WhatsApp chats. To delete large files from old chats go to WhatsApp Settings --> Storage and Data --> Manage Storage --> Under review and delete items it will show the largest files for you to select and delete
Old photos. Move them out of your iCloud. Do you really need all your photos from the past 8 years on your phone at all times? Probably not. Not only does it cost you to store them, but you have to search through thousands of old photos to find the one you want. There are various options for this.
Albums and Photobooks. Remember the 80’s? We took 24 photos on a film, got them printed, then stuck them in photo albums. Easy to flick through at friends and family reunions. Once you had done the album, you chucked the older photos away. Simple! Today photo books are the way forward, organize your events and holidays into photo books, print enough copies for the whole family and delete the old photos.
Macs. If you have a mac, iCloud is (may) also used by your documents folder and desktop files. Think of storing things on your hard drive if you don’t need to access them from your phone.
Duplicate removal. This is easier done from your mac than your phone, but the results will sync with your phone. Photosweeper goes through your photos (on iCloud and external hard drives), finds the duplicates and similars and makes it easy to choose and remove them.
