When you have an iPhone, you will know that there is not much storage for your photos and videos. So, how to buy more storage on iPhone not iCloud?
The easiest way to get more storage on your iPhone is by buying a new phone with a bigger capacity. But if you don’t want to spend money on a new phone, then what can you do?
It’s possible to buy more iCloud storage. You can upgrade your iCloud plan from the Settings app or through iTunes on your computer. You can also use the Google Photos app which offers unlimited photo and video storage at the same price as Apple’s iCloud service.
How To Buy More Storage on iPhone Not iCloud
iPhone storage is limited to the amount of memory that you purchase. There are a few things that can be done to free up more space on your iPhone. One way is by deleting unwanted apps and photos.
Another way is by backing up your phone to iCloud or iTunes, which will also delete unused data from your device. If you want to buy more storage on iPhone, then you need to purchase an external flash drive or hard drive and then connect it with the iPhone using a USB cable.
Video Guide
Why is iPhone Storage Full When I Have iCloud?
Sometimes you might wonder why your iPhone storage is full when you already have iCloud, but if you read along with us in this article you will have the perfect answer to your question.
let’s enlighten you more on what iCloud itself means:
iCloud is a syncing/mirroring service that syncs all of your data across your devices making them available to you. If your iPhone storage is full, you will have to remove data. You can also use the ‘Optimize Phone Storage’ feature to reduce the resolution/quality of the photos on the device.
Is iPhone Storage And iCloud Storage The Same?
A brief explanation will be made here in this section, whether iPhone storage and iCloud storage are the same or they’re not the same. iCloud storage is for your backups and data syncing.
You cannot extend your iPhone storage with iCloud storage. You have to delete stuff you don’t need to make space. iCloud storage is for your backups and data syncing.
How do I get more iCloud storage without buying it?
In this section, you need to follow the brief explanation made here if you want to get more iCloud storage without buying it.
You can free up storage in iCloud by deleting content that you’re not using: Manage your iCloud Backup. Reduce the size of your iCloud Photos. Delete folders or files in iCloud Drive.
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How Can I Increase Storage On My iPhone?
There is more to learn here in this section if want to know how to buy more storage on iPhone not iCloud. There are many ways to increase storage on your iPhone but few will be discussed here:
- Free up Memory on iPhone
As is well known, all iOS devices don’t have an SD card slot. In other words, unlike Android users, you are not allowed to directly expand the storage space of your iPhone by inserting an extra SD card.
Hence, you can only increase iPhone memory in other ways. And here, you can choose to free up space on iPhone for more iPhone storage.
- Extract iPhone Data to PC
Usually, you may consider transferring some files to your computer, an external hard drive, or a USB flash drive to remove some files. How to do this? It is very easy as long as you use a professional iOS data extractor tool.
Here, MiniTool Mobile Recovery for iOS can be a good helper. Developed by MiniTool Software Ltd., it is helpful to transfer existing files to your computer, a USB drive, or an external hard drive and recover lost files from iPhone internal memory/iTunes backup/iCloud backup.
Note that it is available on Windows OS including Windows 10/8/7 and Mac OS X. To move files to your PC or a drive, just get its Free Edition from the following button and install it on Windows 10/8/7 or your Mac.
Then follow the guide below to start to free up iPhone memory to fix the iPhone storage full issue and increase iPhone storage. After running MiniTool Mobile Recovery for iOS, you see three features. Here, we use its Recover from iOS Device
From the following figure, you will find this tool requires you to download the latest version of iTunes firstly. Or else, this feature is not working. Thus, just follow the instruction to download iTunes from Apple’s official website and then click the Retry button.
How Do I Reduce My iPhone Storage?
If you’re running out of iPhone storage space, that doesn’t mean you need to run out and buy a new one. There are lots of things you can do to quickly free up some space or probably to learn how to buy more storage on iPhone not iCloud.
So before resorting to getting a new one, try these quick tips to help fix an iPhone out of storage.
- Clear out old photos and videos
For a good majority of folks, photos are the number one culprit when it comes to storage issues on iPhones and iPad. We carry photos over from one iPhone to another and so on. Over time, our Camera Rolls have grown to a massive size and before we know it, we’re out of space. That’s before we’ve even talked about videos.
As iPhone cameras get better and better, the amount of space required to store high-quality video becomes even more demanding. This is especially the case if you’re using features like slow motion, which records up to 240 frames per second on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Ouch. Luckily, you have several options.
- Use iCloud Photo Library
By enabling iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone or iPad, you can instantly free up some much-needed space on your iPhone or iPad. Just keep in mind that for this to work, there are two caveats:
- You must have enough iCloud storage space (for most of us, this means you have to purchase some)
- Photos that are streamed can’t be viewed offline
About point number two, you can view some photos offline. iCloud Photo Library will typically store recent photos and those that you access frequently in physical storage. If you have lots of free storage space, iCloud Photo Library will take advantage of that and add more photos locally.
As you need more, iCloud Photo Library will automatically free up space by removing local copies. Typically this means older photos. All of this happens in the background and without you realizing it.
If you want to enable iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone or iPad, just follow these steps:
- Tap on Settings.
- Choose Photos & Camera.
- Turn ON the option for iCloud Photo Library.
- Make sure the option for Optimize iPhone/iPad Storage is selected.
- Delete unused apps
This seems like an obvious storage tip but it’s something that often gets overlooked. Make a regular practice of going through all the folders and Home screens of your iPhone or iPad and purging apps you don’t find yourself using. Remember, anything you download (paid or free) can be re-downloaded whenever you’d like since all your purchases are automatically tied to your Apple ID.
If you aren’t using it and you don’t have app data inside that that you need, delete it.
A special note about deleting games: many games rely on data stored locally inside an app. Before deleting any games, make sure you can either back it up to an account you create with the game developer or with iCloud.
- Uninstall and reinstall storage hungry apps
Over time, some apps can become bloated. This happens because they store data locally or cache things for faster performance. A huge example of this is the Facebook app. I’ve seen this app alone take up gigs and gigs of storage space on some people’s iPhones and iPads. Make a regular practice of checking your storage usage and see what apps are the biggest offenders. Uninstalling and reinstalling those apps will usually get rid of all the cached data, in turn freeing up storage space.
There’s an easy way to check what apps are taking up the most storage on your iPhone or iPad. Just follow these steps:
- Tap on the Settings app.
- Select General.
- Select Storage & iCloud Usage.
- Under the Storage section, tap on Manage Storage — don’t confuse this section with the iCloud section.
- You’ll see an overview of how much storage each app is taking up. Tapping into any one of them will get you a delete option, or you can delete them off your Home screen as you’d normally delete apps.
After you delete the storage-hungry apps in question, you can re-install them via the App Store like you normally would.
- Delete old message threads
iMessage and regular text message threads can take up incredible amounts of space. If you never clear them out and they’ve come over from iPhone to iPhone over the years, you may have gigs of space ready for the taking.
Keep in mind that the messages we send contain not only text but pictures and video as well. Save only what you have to and get rid of the rest. If you haven’t looked at a thread in years, you probably don’t need it.
- Keep iTunes music and video to a minimum
Music and video files take up a ton of space. If you’re looking to free up space quickly, this is the number one way to do it. If you purchased it from iTunes, you can always re-download it again later, thanks to iTunes in the Cloud.
iTunes in the Cloud lets you delete music and movies and re-download them on-demand at a later date, this is the same concept as what you can do with apps you’ve previously purchased. Mostly everything you’ve purchased directly from iTunes is fair game.
Mostly because some content has license restrictions. Even so, I’ve rarely run into instances where I couldn’t re-download a movie or song, as long as it was purchased directly from iTunes.
Delete what you aren’t using right now, download it again later when you need it.
Video Guide
How Do I Free Up Space On My iPhone Without Deleting Apps?
You’ll be amazed when finished reading this section because having enough space without deleting applications will be enlightening you and also it can help you to know how to buy more storage in iPhone not iCloud.
- Check the Photo Stream.
- Clear your browser cache.
- Delete downloaded music.
- Delete downloaded podcasts.
If you are an avid Instagrammer you’ve probably also noticed that your phone saves two photos, the original and the one with the filter. To stop this go into the Instagram app, tap on your profile, and then hit the Settings icon in the upper-right corner. Then turn off the Save Original Photos option.
- Check the Photo Stream
This doesn’t take up as much space as the original photos, but these are duplicates of photos that you already have on your phone. Go to Settings, then Photos & Camera, and then switch off Upload to My Photo Stream.
The photos will be deleted off your phone but will remain on the iCloud for 30 days from the date you uploaded them. Don’t worry, you are not deleting any original photos from your phone or photos that have been saved on the iCloud. These will only delete the photos from your Photo Stream, not the camera roll.
- Clear your browser cache
If you use Safari, your iPhone could be storing web history and data.
To clear the browser cache, open the Settings app and tap on Safari.
Scroll down and hit Clear History and Website Data.
- Delete downloaded music
Not everyone is willing to part with their music.
But in the age of Spotify and Soundcloud, using your iPhone to store music has become obsolete for some.
- Go into Settings
- Then General
- Then Storage
- iCloud Usage
- Then Manage Storage.
Find Apple Music on the list. You can swipe to delete individual songs or you can select All Songs.
- Delete downloaded podcasts
Unlike music, you probably don’t go back and re-listen to an old podcast.
To delete them follow the same prompts as you did for music but tap on Podcasts instead of Apple Music.
You can swipe to delete podcasts for each show.
- Delete your reading list
Safari’s offline reading list can take up space by storing web pages for you to read when you have no internet connection.
- Go to Settings
- Then General
- Then Storage
- iCloud Usage.
Under Storage hit Manage Storage and then Safari. Swipe left on Offline Reading List.
