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Clear Safari and Chrome Cache
Web browsers accumulate a lot of data in caches. This makes for faster web browsing, as images and other assets don’t need to be continually downloaded. This also takes up space on your device. unfortunately, deleting this content isn’t the best option to free up space. As you surf the web, the caches will grow back in size. iOS versions of Safari and Chrome don’t allow you to specify a maximum size for the cache. Deleting cached content will also slow down your web browser, as images and content must be downloaded instead of retrieved from the cache. I don’t recommend this unless you are desperate for space in the short term.
To clear Safari’s cache, go to Settings > General > Usage > Safari > Website Data. You may have to show all apps to see Safari in the list. From here, you can clear the cache for individual sites or clear out everything. Slide your finger from right to left over each individual item, then tap Delete. To delete all website data, tap on Remove All Website Data and confirm.
You can also clear your Offline Reading List in Safari. Go back from Website Data and slide your finger from right to left on Offline Reading List, then tap the Delete button. It’s also possible to delete your history in the same manner, however, this will not free up much space.
You can also clear Chrome’s cache in order to temporarily free up space. Launch Chrome and then tap on Settings > Privacy > Clear Cache. I don’t recommend clearing the other options, as they won’t produce much space.
Delete Unused Content
Unused content is by far the biggest storage space hog on the iPhone. People tend to take a lot of photos, subscribe to many podcasts and download music and videos. Fortunately, this is also the easiest way to free up space.
Most of my iPhone space is taken up by photos and videos. Make sure to back up your photos and videos, as mentioned previously. Unfortunately, you can’t just delete all of your photos and videos at once from Settings > General > Usage > Photos & Camera. Most people probably don’t want to delete everything. It’s easy to view a list of thumbnails and select multiple photos and videos to delete. First, launch Photos and tap on an album, such as Camera Roll.
You’ll see a list of photo and video thumbnails. Tap on Select on the top right corner and then tap each item you would like to delete.
A check mark appears on each selected photo or video. You can deselect it by tapping the image again. When you have selected the images you would like to delete, tap the trash can icon in the lower right corner, then tap Delete Photos. (continue…)
