How to Free Up Your iPhone Storage in 30 Seconds

If you're the proud owner of a shiny new gold 64 GB iPhone 6S Plus (or whichever model is cool by the time you read this) and you can't even use it because you're out of storage space, then I must ask: what the hell are you doing?! 

There's nothing worse than the dreaded “storage almost full” notification and all the panic and anxiety that ensues. Trying to decide which apps to delete can be as grueling as Sophie's Choice, so if you're short on time, these quick cheats and easy settings adjustments will free up space in your iPhone ASAP. That way, you can get back to watching Netflix and reacting to Facebook posts

Set your old texts to automatically delete

There's no good reason to save that "new phone who dis" message for eternity. But instead of deleting those old garbage texts one by one, simply go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages. Decide how long you want to keep them around, and your phone deletes the oldies in one fell swoop.
 

Turn off your photo stream

Photo Stream combines all the images you’ve taken on your other devices with the photo roll on your phone, taking up precious MBs. Go to Settings > Photos & Camera, then switch off Photo Stream and revel in those sweet, sweet extra bytes.
 

Delete your old voicemails

Go to Phone > Voicemail > Edit, select old voicemails and Delete. Your phone still stores deleted voicemails for no good reason, so make sure that afterwards you scroll down to Deleted Messages > Clear All or all that hard work will have been for nothing.

Delete podcasts you've already listened to

This one's going to be kind of hard to swallow, but it's time to delete Serial off your phone. At this point, you should just assume all parties involved are guilty. Podcasts run around 25 MBs each, so free up some space by going to Settings > Podcasts > Delete Played Episodes.
 

Only keep HDR photos

HDR (high dynamic range) combines the best version of three different exposures into one photo, and if you have “Keep Normal Photo” (aka your inferior original) selected, you’re essentially doubling up. Don't keep the originals. Go to Settings > Photos & Camera > switch off Keep Normal Photos.
 

Clear your browser cache 

If you use Safari a lot, it’s likely storing a ton of unnecessary web history and data to keep you browser ever-so-slightly faster. Clear that mess in Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data.

Purge your extraneous Instagram photos

Look, you don't need a whole album full of duplicate photos that are already readily available on Instagram. What are you going to do with two pictures of that chicken dinner you made last night? Hell, you don't even need one! Let go, child. Go to your Photos > Edit and delete the Instagram photo album in one go.

And tell Instagram to stop saving them

This preventative measure ensures Instagram will stop saving photos in a separate album in your Photos app. Open the Instagram app > your profile > Options > unselect "Save Original Photos."

Dump all that offline data

If you’re a Spotify premium subscriber like me (or pay for similar access to Apple Music or Tidal) you probably save certain playlists for offline listening (so you can rock out underground during your subway commute). But if you’re in desperate need of extra space, you’ll want to scrap that luxury. There’s no on-button-fix-all here; you need to manually uncheck “Available Offline” from any playlist where you’ve enabled it.

Sign up here for our daily Thrillist email, and get your fix of the best in food/drink/fun.

Jeremy Glass is a writer for Thrillist and really likes what you did with your hair today.

Joe McGauley is a senior writer for Thrillist and just deleted all your texts. Sorry.