iPhone Storage not Accurate? Want to Know How to Free Up Storage!

  • By: Kevin
  • Date:
  • Time to read: 9 min.
Affiliate Disclaimer

As an affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Managing your iPhone storage well is critical to achieving your personal and business goals. If your iPhone storage is not accurate, it can hinder your ability to plan for digital entertainment media, social media use, and even your daily fitness tracking needs.

Your smartphone storage can be checked with just a few clicks, but what can you do when the figure for the number of gigabytes that you have as available storage is incorrect?

You’ll always need new storage space for educational PDFs, pictures of family, and news releases in video format. If your iPhone is saying that there’s not enough storage for a video or another download, when you know that space should be available, it can make you feel confused and frustrated.

This article will show you how to solve that problem, so you can accomplish your goals.

iPhone storage not accurate? Check your deleted files

Your phone may be giving you an incorrect total for available storage because it’s incorrectly accounting for the deleted files in its memory. You might have already deleted pictures, or other media because you wanted to make sure you had space to store new files.

After doing that, you may still be getting an error message regarding the amount of storage that is available.

This sometimes happens when your phone doesn’t register the fact that deleted files are no longer in their initial location. Just as pictures and videos on a desktop computer are moved to the Recycle Bin when they’re deleted, media files on your iPhone are moved to a Recently Deleted Photos folder.

In the Recently Deleted Photos folder, your photos and videos may still be counted among the files that need to be allocated to a portion of the device’s memory. After deleting your photos from Message Attachments and other locations, you’ll also have to remove them from the Recently Deleted Photos folder.

If you don’t do that, your phone may not allow you to save anything new.

You’ll have to do this manually since there’s not currently an automatic option that works quickly. Apple does have a system for removing recently deleted files, but that system is slow. It can take as long as thirty days to remove files that you’ve deleted if you rely on Apple’s in-built system.

The problem is that a lot of the time when people decide to delete files, it’s because they’ve received a message that no space is available. They don’t have time to wait thirty days.

The solution discussed here will help you to quickly create space for photos at an event you’re planning to attend.

Always do this whenever you remove files from your device in order to get additional space. It doesn’t matter whether you are removing text documents, pictures, or audio files.

All of them can be incorrectly included in storage calculations when they are in a Recently Deleted folder.

iPhone storage not accurate? Restart your iPhone

After you have removed your pictures from the Recently Deleted Photos folder, restart your phone. The system will need to go through this process, so it can be updated fully on the status of all files.

After you restart your iPhone, you should see the accurate quantity of storage that is available.

If you were seeing a message indicating that your storage on your iPhone was full, this should disappear after you restart your smartphone. Always try to delete as many files as you can, as often as you can.

This will keep your phone ready for any activity that you plan.

iPhone storage not accurate? What’s taking up your storage space?

Before you can download music to enjoy while you travel, you’ll need to find out what is taking up space on your phone. Go to Settings, then Storage.

You’ll see a bar chart that shows you how many Gigabytes the apps and functions on your mobile are using. The bar for each one is assigned a bright color, so it’s easy to identify.

The storage allocation bars are arranged from the highest to the lowest, so you can quickly identify the tool that will free up the most space. If you’re an avid game player, you may see a lot of Gigabytes allocated to this hobby.

Graphic designers may have a lot of image files on their phones, to help them create art on the go. Sometimes you’ll recognize that you’re giving space on your device to an app that you don’t use often, if at all.

Manage Audio Files

Deleting unused apps and functions can free up space fast. Ensure that you really don’t need to use it before you delete it.

If you have a podcast app, you’re likely to have a lot of episodes on it that you’ve already downloaded and listened to. The things you’ve learned from them may already be a part of your life.

Delete them, and make room for the informative podcasts you’ll listen to in the days ahead.

Check all the apps that you’ve used to download music. Some of them may no longer have to be accessible on your smartphone because you have them stored somewhere else.

Perhaps you have a course you’ve listened to, and your participation is complete. If you have another copy of the audio or have a subscription for lifelong access, you don’t need to store the files.

You can use external storage on the cloud to save space on your phone, so consider using Dropbox, or other reliable options.

iPhone storage not accurate? Manage Images and video

If you regularly check work-related emails and download images from those to your phone, you can gain a significant quantity of space by deleting all the old images. Also, look for PDF files and other documents related to work projects that have already been completed.

Many of these will be stored in the Downloads section of your phone, and you can select them individually.

Removing nonessential videos regularly helps to prevent issues with processing time, which sometimes arise when your phone is bogged down by too many media files. You can schedule a regular time for this, and help to keep your iPhone in good working order.

Assess work-related documents, ensuring that you only keep those that are absolutely necessary and that they’re password protected.

Stop photo streaming

Your iPhone automatically streams your photographs across all of your iOS devices, and it can handle 1,000 photos in this way. It’s beneficial to you because it means you have an automatic backup for your pictures.

The problem is that this takes up space, and there are more effective ways of saving extra copies of your pictures. You can save them to the cloud instead, by using a service such as Google Photos for free.

You can stop photo live streaming, and make all of that space available for other tasks. Go to your phone’s Settings, and select Photos.

Tap Upload to My Photo Stream, and turn the feature off, for the time being. When you want to stream recent photos again, you can easily switch it back on.

Reduce files associated with HDR

HDR photos take advantage of the wonders of modern technology, displaying elements in each image that would not be clear with other types of pictures. This result is achieved by using three different exposures.

The final photo is really a combination of the best sections of each exposure. Your mobile stores all of those exposures, and that takes unnecessary memory.

To stop it from doing that, go to your Settings, and select Photos. Deselect Keep Normal Photo.

Manage your app usage

There are two ways to adjust your app usage so that you’ll have more room available on your phone. The first option involves deleting them completely and immediately provides more space than any other solution.

Unfortunately, deleting an app is permanent, and you’ll no longer have access to any of its features.

If you use an app every few months, you might as well delete it. For example, if you use an app to track the distance you cover whenever you go hiking, you won’t need to always have that on your phone.

You can delete it completely, and just download it again the next time you need it.

Offloading apps is an alternative to deleting them, which works well for some iPhone clients. When you offload the app, it frees up space because the software is no longer available to you.

Your phone will still store all of the data associated with the app.

Offloading makes it easy to repopulate fields with your desired data when you choose to download the app again. That can help you to save time, and that makes this alternative useful for apps you might use every now and then.

To offload an app, navigate to the Storage interface on your iPhone. Tap any app that you’re interested in and select Offload. Once the process is complete, that option will change to Reinstall.

When you’re ready to use the app again, you won’t need to search for it online. You can just tap it, to start benefiting from it again quickly.

Manage Browsing Activity

Your browser stores a significant amount of data. Every time you enter a search term, storage space is used to keep the information. That’s what makes it easy for your browser to present your most frequently searched terms as soon as you open it.

If you spend a lot of time doing searches because of your work, educational tasks, or personal entertainment needs, a lot of space can be used in this way. All of your login data also takes up space, even if you only save one factor used for authentication.

You can delete your browsing history and data under the individual settings menu for each app. For some browsers, you can delete the data by going to Settings on your phone, and selecting the app.

If you use more than one browser, go through the same process for each one, and free up more storage space. You may also consider reducing the number of browsers on your phone, to two that have particular features that you appreciate.

Delete your Messages

Messaging is a popular means of communication, and several people send at least five messages a day. Each of these may have one, or multiple replies, and your iPhone saves all of those threads automatically.

If you’ve never deleted a message, you are probably using a lot of memory on messages related to things that aren’t a priority any longer.

You can automatically delete your messages after a specific time. Some people choose to remove those which are older than a year, while others may delete messages over 30 days old.

The option of keeping all of your messages forever exists, so you should at least check to ensure that your iPhone is not using that option. To check and set the options that are right for you, go to your Settings, tap Messages, and adjust the settings under Message History.

Even after you adjust your settings for automatic deletions, you’ll have to manually go through your messages and address other issues that take up valuable memory. You may often get messages with attachments., such as pictures from a wedding, or a video of a friend shooting hoops.

Attachments make your day brighter, but after viewing them the first time, you don’t need to keep all of them on your phone. You can tap each message and then click on the “I” icon.

This will show you all the videos and pictures connected to it, allowing you to remove the ones that you don’t want.

Deleting attachments manually can take a lot of time. There’s another option for controlling the amount of space that is used on attachments. Go to Settings, General, and then Storage. Tap on Review Large Attachments to remove them from the device.

Conclusion

If your iPhone storage is not accurate, the problem may be caused by deleted files that your phone doesn’t recognize as being removed yet.

Once you’ve fixed that, and take steps to remove other files that are taking up space on your mobile, you’ll enjoy a better user experience. Your mobile will process tasks more quickly, and you can benefit from new and interesting media.