One of the most frustrating experiences on an iPhone is trying to record a video or download a new app, only to receive a pop-up warning that your “Storage is Full.” Before you start randomly deleting your favorite photos or uninstalling apps you actually use, you should check exactly what is consuming your storage space so you can make informed decisions about what to clean up.
How to Check Your Local iPhone Storage
Your local storage is the physical hard drive built directly into the phone (e.g., 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB). This holds your apps, the operating system, and locally saved media.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Scroll down and tap on General.
- Tap on iPhone Storage.
- The phone may take a few seconds to calculate the data. Once it finishes, you will see a color-coded bar graph at the very top of the screen. This graph gives you a visual breakdown of your storage usage (e.g., Apps, iOS, Photos, Media, System Data).
- Directly above the graph, it will tell you exactly how much space you have used versus your total capacity (e.g., “112 GB of 128 GB Used”).
- Below the graph, Apple will often provide “Recommendations” for quickly freeing up space, such as “Offload Unused Apps” or “Review Large Attachments.”
- If you scroll down further, you will see a list of every single app installed on your phone, sorted by size from largest to smallest. This is the most useful part of the menu.
- You can tap on any specific app in the list to see exactly how much space the app itself takes up versus its “Documents & Data” (the files saved inside the app).
How to Check Your iCloud Storage Space
iCloud storage is completely separate from your physical iPhone storage. iCloud is Apple’s remote server where your device backups, synced photos, and cloud documents are stored. Every Apple ID receives 5GB of free iCloud storage.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- At the very top of the menu, tap on your Name / Apple ID profile picture.
- Tap on iCloud.
- At the top of this screen, you will see another color-coded bar graph representing your iCloud usage.
- This graph will show you how much of your cloud storage is consumed by Backups, Photos, and Documents.
- If you tap Manage Account Storage directly below the graph, you can see a detailed breakdown of which apps are syncing data to the cloud and choose to delete cloud backups for old devices you no longer own.