Are you an iOS user?  Have you upgraded to iOS 7?  If you answered yes to both questions, then you might find yourself lacking storage space on whatever device you happen to be using.  The reason behind this is iOS 7 takes up a whopping 3.3 GB of your storage space, and for anyone who’s using an 8GB device or 16GB device, that’s a pretty big deal.  That means less apps you can download, and less photos and videos you can take.  Sucks right?

So how you can get more space back on your beloved iOS device?

5 Ways to Save Storage

Check the “Other” files

Before you start deleting apps, photos and videos, your best bet is to check the “Other” portion of your device.  You do this by connecting your device to iTunes.  Once connected, you will see the colored storage bar at the bottom of the screen.  It tells you how much space you have available, how much space your photos, apps, and audio are taking up, and then there’s the “Other” portion.

Most of us neglect this part, thinking it’s unimportant but actually it is. These hidden files contain such things as the Safari browser cache, Siri’s cache, reminders, notes, stocks, weather data, emails, text messages and iMessages, as well as cached data for all the other apps on your device.  So you better clear up your cache first before you start deleting apps to clear some space.

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Delete space hogging apps

Some apps may seem harmless as they’re only a few hundred MB in size, but once you download them, the app size may in fact blow up.  This is because of all the other data the app needs to function.  Most data hog apps are those related to media, such as photo editing apps, news apps, and even games that run in HD.

To check which apps are using too much space, go to Settings > General > Usage.  It may take a few seconds or minutes to populate depending on how many apps you have installed. From there, you can start deleting apps that you think you can do without.

photo credit: Photo Giddy via photopin cc

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Saving app data

If you think you may be using apps in the future, but for now you want to delete them, and you don’t want to lose all the data or progress in the app, you can back up that app on iTunes. Alternatively, if you delete apps from your iOS device, be sure you don’t completely remove any app from your iTunes account and your data will be saved.

If you are using a Mac, connect your iOS device via USB, select Apps from iExplorer’s sidebar and select the app for which you want the data to be saved.  Select the Documents and Library folders, Ctrl-click and select Export to Folder.  If you download the app again in the future, the folders will be sideloaded into the fresh install, which means that all your previous data becomes available again.

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HDR photos

If your camera app’s HDR feature is turned on and you like taking photos, this will take up a ton of storage space.  HDR takes three photos, one in normal exposure, one in over exposure, and one in under exposure.  It then merges the three photos to make one stunning photo.  But aside from that, it also keeps the normal exposure version.  So you actually have two photos saved for every image on your phone.

You can change this in the Settings menu, by turning off the option for saving the normal exposure photo.  By doing this, only one image will be saved.  Just note that not all HDR photos turn out good, so you either need to turn on the save the normal exposure photo, or just turn off the HDR feature altogether.

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Photos and Videos

We all love taking photos and looking at them, but the problem with this is that saving too many photos and videos quickly eats up your available storage space.  The best way to remedy this is to backup all your photos and videos on your computer, or if you want to be able to access them anytime, use cloud storage for backup.  This way, you can look at and share your photos anytime you want, while still leaving plenty of room on the device itself.

Sources: TechRadar, 9to5Mac, ArsTechnica