iPhone storage guides
Where your iPhone's space goes and how to get it back, using the Settings and Photos apps you already have. Updated for iOS 27.
Storage full? Start here
Work through it in this order. The biggest wins come first.
See what's actually full
Settings › General › iPhone Storage splits your space by app, and Photos is usually the biggest.
Start with videos
A handful of long clips is often the whole problem. Shrink the ones you want to keep.
Clear copies and clutter
Duplicates, old screenshots and blurry shots add up to more than you'd think.
Empty Recently Deleted
Deleted photos keep using space there for 30 days. This is the step most people miss.
Stop it filling up again
Recording at 1080p instead of 4K slows your library's growth the most.
Understand your storage
- iPhone storage full? Here's how to get space backYour iPhone says storage is full. Find out what's actually using the space, then clear the biggest things first: videos, duplicates, screenshots and Recently Deleted.
- Deleted photos but your storage didn't go down?Deleted photos stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days and keep using space. Here's how to empty it, and why your storage number can take a while to update.
- What is System Data on iPhone?System Data is caches, logs, Siri voices, fonts and other files iOS manages itself. What it is, why it grows, and the few things that actually shrink it.
- Are iPhone cleaner apps safe?What a photo cleaner app can and can't do on iPhone, and five things to check before you give one access to your library or start a trial.
Photos
- How to delete duplicate photos on iPhoneUse the Photos app's built-in Duplicates album to merge exact copies, and learn what it misses: similar shots, bursts and near-duplicates.
- How to find and delete blurry photos on iPhonePhotos has no blurry filter. Here's the fastest manual method, and how on-device blur detection finds out-of-focus shots for you.
- How to delete all your screenshots on iPhoneFind every screenshot in the Photos app, select them in bulk and delete them. Plus how to keep the few you actually need.
Videos
- How to find the videos taking up space on your iPhoneThe Photos app can't sort by file size. Here's how to find your biggest videos anyway, and what to do with them.
- How to compress a video on iPhoneShrink 4K videos to 1080p to get most of their space back without deleting them. Apple's iMovie method, and a faster way that replaces the original only if you say so.
Save space without deleting
- The iPhone camera settings that save the most storageVideo resolution and frame rate, photo format, Live Photos and iCloud: the settings that decide how fast your iPhone fills up.
- How to free up iPhone space without deleting your photosKeep every memory and still get gigabytes back: compress big videos, optimize iCloud, offload apps and clear the copies you don't need.