How to free up storage on your phone for the summer

The air has started to smell thickly of overcooked meat and coconut sun cream, and that can only mean one thing: summer has arrived. Cut to festivals, holidays, days out, last-minute barbecues and sunsets that absolutely need to be photographed. What you don’t need is to stand on the sidelines frantically deleting old screenshots because your phone ran out of room right as something brilliant was happening.

Here’s the thing: clearing storage is one of the quickest and most satisfying tech jobs you can do. You can do most of it in 10 minutes. Do it now, do it properly and you’ll head into the sunny season with a phone that’s ready for anything – and has enough space to actually do it.

Plus, with our Volt plans, we’ve got the mobile data to match once you’ve had a clear-out. Here’s how to free up storage on your phone before summer.

Before you start deleting things at random (baby’s first steps vs a funny dog video your mate sent you), take a couple of minutes to find out what’s causing the problem. Most people are surprised by what they find – and knowing where the culprit lies makes everything else much faster.

iPhone

1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.

2. Wait for the coloured bar to load – this breaks your usage down by category (apps, photos, messages and more).

3. Scroll down for a full list of apps sorted by size. Anything enormous you haven’t opened since last Christmas is a very good place to start.

Android

1. Go to Settings > Storage (or Battery and Device Care > Storage on a Samsung).

2. Tap Storage to see a full breakdown by category.

3. Tap any category to drill down and find out exactly which apps or files are doing the most damage.

If you never took the bins out (and there’s someone in your household who suggests you never do), they’d stink. Same for your phone. So, here’s a quick win most people don’t think about. When you delete a photo or video, it goes into a Recently Deleted folder, where it sits lurking for 30 days, taking up as much space as it always did. If you went on a delete spree last week, congrats, but everything is still there. Empty the folder manually and you’ll often reclaim a large amount of storage.

iPhone

1. Open the Photos app and tap Albums at the bottom.

2. Scroll down to Utilities and tap Recently Deleted.

3. Tap Select in the top right, then Delete All. Done.

Android (Google Photos)

1. Open Google Photos and tap your profile picture in the top right.

2. Tap Manage storage, then Review and delete.

3. Select Trash, tap Empty Trash and confirm.

Photos and videos are usually the main culprit when your storage starts creaking – and the solution isn’t to stop taking them, it’s to stop keeping them all on your device. Once your library is safely backed up to the cloud, you can get back gigabytes of space without losing a single snap. A good summer’s worth of photos takes up a lot of room. Future You will be very grateful you did this now. 

iPhone (iCloud)

1. Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Photos and make sure iCloud Photos is switched on.

2. Keep your phone on charge and connected to WiFi and wait for the upload to complete. This can take a while if you’ve never done it before.

3. Once it’s done, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Photos and select Optimise iPhone Storage. This keeps small preview versions on your phone while the full-quality originals live safely in iCloud.

Android (Google Photos)

1. Open Google Photos, tap your profile picture and select Photos settings > Backup.

2. Turn Backup on and set it to your preferred quality.

3. Once the backup is complete, tap your profile picture again, select Manage storage and hit Free up space. This removes everything that’s already safely backed up from your device.

Every app on your phone is quietly accumulating data in the background – cached images, temporary files, stored previews – and most of it is frankly useless. Instagram alone can hoard hundreds of megabytes of cached content you’ve never consciously asked it to keep. A cache clear won’t log you out of anything or delete any of your saved content. It’s just another space clearer, that’s all. 

iPhone

iOS doesn’t have a single universal cache-clearing option, but the quickest method for any individual app is a delete-and-reinstall. It sounds more dramatic than it is – but it takes about 30 seconds and nothing important is lost.

1. Press and hold the app icon and select Remove App.

2. Tap Delete App to confirm.

3. Go to the App Store, search for the app and reinstall it. Sign in and you’ll be back in your account, ready to post.

Android

1. Go to Settings > Apps.

2. Find the app you want to clear – Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp are reliable places to start.

3. Tap Storage > Clear Cache. That’s it. Repeat for any app that’s been particularly greedy.

If you downloaded a playlist for a road trip six months ago, it’s probably still there. Same goes for that podcast series you got three episodes into and quietly abandoned. Clear the downloads – the content will still be available to stream whenever you want it, it just won’t be squatting on your device. 

Spotify

1. Go to Your Library and find the playlist, album or podcast you want to remove.

2. Tap the green download arrow to toggle it off.

3. Confirm the removal. It’ll stream perfectly fine whenever you want it – it just won’t take up local storage space any more.

Apple Music

1. Open the Music app and find the downloaded content.

2. Press and hold the track, album or playlist and tap Remove.

3. Select Remove Download – not Delete from Library, unless you actually want it gone from your account entirely.

Podcasts and audiobooks

The same logic applies in Apple Podcasts, Audible and all other audio apps. Old episodes you’ve already listened to… get rid, pal.

You either love a group chat clear-out or you’re still in meet-up chats from before the pandemic. Did you know that group chats – especially on WhatsApp – become some of the biggest storage drains? It’s usually because of all the photos, videos, voice notes and memes that keep being posted long after the get-together’s hangover has subsided. You’ve seen once and never looked at again. It’s time.

WhatsApp (iPhone and Android)

1. Open WhatsApp and go to Settings > Storage and Data > Manage Storage.

2. You’ll see a list of all your chats sorted by storage used. The group chats will almost certainly be at the top.

3. Tap any chat, select the media you want to remove and tap the bin icon to delete it. Work your way down the list and don’t be sentimental about it.

iPhone Messages

1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages.

2. You’ll see a breakdown by category – Top Conversations, Photos, Videos, GIFs and Stickers.

3. Tap each category and clear out anything you don’t need to keep. Photos and Videos are usually where the biggest wins are hiding.

Once you’ve sorted your storage, there’s one more thing to think about before the summer really kicks off: making sure you’ve got enough mobile data to use it.

The point of having a beautifully cleared phone is being able to fill it back up. Think: streaming music on a balcony, posting videos on holiday, navigating a new city, video calling home when you’re abroad. All of that needs data.

If you’re a Virgin Media broadband customer, you can unlock double mobile data as standard by pairing your broadband with an O2 SIM through Volt. That means more room to stream, scroll, share and stay connected wherever the summer takes you, without the nagging worry that you’re about to run out.

And if you’re heading abroad, Volt also includes roaming in 75 destinations worldwide covering Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and plenty more. No fiddling with local SIMs, no unexpected charges, just your usual data exactly where you need it.

Discover our latest broadband and O2 SIM deals and unlock the benefits of Volt.