How to Conserve Storage Space on IOS 11
At WWDC 2017, Apple announced iOS 11 , and with it, many space-saving features for small devices. It’s good that Apple made 32GB the smallest storage in the iOS lineup, but it’s still not enough. Tons of people are already wasting time trying to reduce the size of their photos, apps, and other bits of data in order to save space and not face the dreaded “Can’t Take Photo” warning when it’s time to hitch.
You don’t have to suffer from a lack of memory if you play your cards right. If you have external storage, uninstall some old apps and listen to your phone when it tells you to reset some texts and you (probably) don’t have to worry about running out of space anymore.
Get iCloud storage
Apple has lowered the monthly cost of its 2TB iCloud storage plan to $ 9.99 from $ 19.99. This is a great move as more apps are choosing to use iCloud sync for storing documents and data. It still offers a very cheap $ 0.99 / month subscription for 50GB of cloud storage, a plan I just signed up for considering I just ran out of storage due to my iOS backups.
The price drop is a great incentive to sign up for extra storage, although iCloud isn’t my favorite cloud storage platform. Compared to the $ 9.99 / month Google Drive plan for 1 TB of storage, this is really a good deal if you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem. ICloud also adds Family Storage Sharing, so feel free to share this 2TB plan with six “family members.”
Since one of his suggestions for freeing up storage on your phone is uploading your photos to iCloud Photo Library, buying a basic plan might be an option instead of shelling out another $ 100 to double your iPhone storage.
Back up (or just delete) your messages
Surprisingly, your blue bubbles and funny pictures that you send to friends take up more space than you think – that’s enough for iOS 11 to provide storage management for iMessages.
Apple insists that messages and attachments are saved in iCloud rather than on the device, and is offering new options for viewing large photos, videos, and attachments, which are prime candidates for deletion. iOS 11 will prompt you to automatically delete conversations older than a year if you just don’t need them. Combined with new video and photo file formats that promise to reduce their size while maintaining quality, deleting your posts for free space should be less of a hassle. Sure, this is a feature that should have been introduced when Apple was still shipping 16GB iOS devices, but it’s nice.
Say goodbye to old apps
You know there are many applications on your phone that you haven’t touched in a long time. Luckily for you, your good friend Apple is here to help you get rid of those dusty squares on your device by blocking them in iOS 11 until they come together. This step might not save you a ton of storage, but it sounds like a fatal blow for large and unsupported games, even if you’re a regular user.
In short, 32-bit apps won’t work on iOS 11. The solution is not new; Apple announced its move from 32-bit to 64-bit apps in December 2014. Apps that haven’t updated to a more modern 64-bit architecture are currently displaying a popup saying that the old architecture might cause your iOS device to malfunction, but they simply won’t run in iOS 11. Instead, you’ll get a passive-aggressive message about how lazy the developer is for not updating their app.
You can see which apps haven’t updated to iOS 11 and of course clean them yourself. In Settings, select General> About> Apps and you will see a list of outdated apps.
Apple is also copying a feature found on some Android phones to save space for larger apps. The Unload Unused App feature allows you to uninstall any app you are not using, but retain associated documents and other personal information on your device. When it’s time to download it again, just tap on the gray app and watch it download. You can turn on the offload feature in Settings> General> iPhone Storage and see which apps are suggested to be removed until further notice.