Best Ways to Instantly Free Up Space on Your Mobile

You never want to see the dreaded "storage almost full" message pop up on your phone. That means you've filled up your phone with so much stuff—apps, docs, photos, videos, secret files—that you can't cram anything else on it, leading to questions like these: Which apps should you delete first? Do you really need every photo from the last five years? Why even bother downloading music in the streaming era, anyway?

But here's the good news: Just as it's shockingly easy to accumulate all that crap very quickly, it's actually pretty simple to get rid of it without having a breakdown. So here are the most straightforward (and surprising) ways to free up a ton of space on your phone.

1. Set up iCloud Photos, stat.

iCloud keeps all your photos and videos in their original high-res format, and when you sign up, Apple automatically gives you 5 GB of free storage space. You'll have to pay up for additional space, but the cost is easy to stomach: Plans start at 99 cents for 50 GB per month. Small price to pay for all that space and some peace of mind.

But a word of caution: iCloud does not automatically back up your photos in the sense you'd normally think, because any changes you make on one device will be mirrored across others, like your iPad or Mac. So deleting a photo from your phone will delete it elsewhere. To prevent that, make sure you keep backup copies of everything important.

On your device, with iOS 10.3 or later installed, go to Settings > (your name) > iCloud > Photos. Select "Download" and "Keep Originals" and import them to your computer.

Another way to save space is to compress the size of your files. Since photos and videos are already saved in their original hi-res version in iCloud, you can save space on your iPhone with the "Optimize Storage" setting.

•  Tap Settings > (your name) > iCloud. Then, tap Photos > Choose Optimize iPhone Storage.

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