‘Crazy good’ iPhone trick instantly upgrades phone with extra storage in three taps and fans say ‘I was blown away’
A POWERFUL feature instantly frees up huge amounts of storage on your iPhone.
You’ll find it tucked away in your settings – it only takes three taps to get to the feature.
Storage on your iPhone is extremely valuable, and dictates what you can keep on the handset.
It’s not always easy to free up space, and working out what to delete can be a major challenge.
But a Reddit user has shared a clever feature that you might have overlooked.
The post was titled “how crazy good Optimize iPhone Storage works”.
And the user wrote: “About 44 GB of photos and videos (~15,000 items) in iCloud are now only taking up 8 MB (!!!) on my device.
They added: “I was blown away of how tiny it was.”
Another user said: “Pretty amazing service, really. For reference I have 42k photos and 2.6k videos. Occupies 9GB on device, and 654GB in iCloud.”
What is Optimize iPhone Storage?
Optimize iPhone Storage is a special setting that offloads your photos and videos to iCloud.
And it keeps lower-resolution versions of those files on your device, only accessing the full versions when you need them.
“By default, your photos and videos are stored on your device in their original, high-resolution version,” Apple explained.
“This means that they use a lot of space on your iPhone and iPad.
“With iCloud Photos, you can make more space available on your device and still have access to your entire full-resolution collection wherever you go.”
To set up iCloud Photos, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Photos.
Then tap on Sync this iPhone, choose to turn on iCloud Photos, and then select Optimize iPhone Storage.
“When Optimize Storage is turned on, full-resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud, and, when needed, space-saving copies are stored on your device,” Apple noted.
“And as long as you have enough space in iCloud, you can store as many photos and videos as you want.”
The main issue you might run in to is a lack of space.
iCloud comes with 5GB of free storage as standard, but you’ll need to pay to unlock more.
In the US, pricing for iCloud+ is as follows:
- 50GB: $0.99
- 200GB: $2.99
- 2TB: $9.99
- 6TB: $29.99
- 12TB: $59.99
And in the UK, here’s how much iCloud+ will set you back:
- 50GB: £0.99
- 200GB: £2.99
- 2TB: £8.99
- 6TB: £26.99
- 12TB: £54.99
It’s unlikely you’ll need the highest tiers unless you’re an extreme file hoarder.
But if you do find yourself wanting to take endless photos, iCloud+ with Optimize iPhone Storage is an easy way to make sure you always have plenty of space available.