Are you getting ominous warnings about your phone’s memory? Have you ever pulled out your phone to show someone a certain photo and had to scroll for minutes to find it? If you’ve accumulated gigabytes of images over the years, streamlining your photo library and ditching other unnecessary apps and files can help you reclaim that space. Here’s a guide on how to do just that using free tools that are probably already on your phone.
Check the storage
Start the cleanup process by noting where your drive is—and what’s filling it.
On many Android devices, open the Settings app and select Storage to check available space.
On a Samsung Galaxy device, open the Settings app, select either Device care or Device maintenance, and then tap Storage. On some phones, you can scroll down to Storage.
On iPhone, open the Settings app and select General and then iPhone Storage to see the amount of space left on your phone. The steps are similar for the iPad.
Delete duplicates
Copying identical copies of photos is an easy way to restore grass. While there are subscription apps available to collect duplicate files of all types (like Duplicates Cleaner for Android or Phone Cleaner for iOS), consider free options on your phone.
In Apple’s iOS Photos app, tap the Albums icon at the bottom of the screen and scroll down to the Utilities area. Tap Duplicates. The next screen shows the photos and videos with multiple copies in your library, all next to a Merge button. The Merge option keeps the highest resolution copy (and the embedded information) and moves the smaller versions to the app’s Recently Deleted album.
Samsung has a similar tool for tracking duplicate files on its Galaxy devices. Tap the My Files icon and select Analyze Storage from the menu. On the next screen, select Duplicate files to view the list.
Open the Files app, tap the menu icon in the upper-left corner, and select Cleanup. The next screen offers a variety of things you can delete to save space, including any duplicates, downloads, screenshots, little-used apps, and large files.
Personal review
It can be tedious, but scrolling back and deleting unnecessary elements by hand is a precise way to crop your photos and videos. If you have a huge library, splitting the project into daily sessions when you’re on mass transit (or otherwise waiting around) reduces your collection incrementally. Be sure to also check out any third-party photo apps that store photos.
A deleted photo does not evaporate immediately. Most systems keep all recently deleted photos and videos for at least 30 days before the final deletion, unless you manually empty the Trash or Deleted Items folder.
If you have photos you want to keep and don’t use online backup, export copies to a computer via email, Android Quick Share, Apple’s AirDrop, or another transfer method. (And make sure you have a backup system for your computer.)
Accept suggestions
Need more help? Apple’s support site has tips, and the iPhone storage screen offers recommendations for cleaning up old files and apps. Samsung’s site has ideas for Galaxy owners. In the Google Photos user account settings, there are tools to free up space and manage storage that list files to view and delete.
Suggestions usually include moving your photos from the phone to an online server or to an external SD memory card if your phone has a card slot, allowing you to reclaim space on the phone when you unload the files.
iCloud for Apple Photos, Google Photos, Samsung Cloud, or a service like Dropbox frees up space because the device doesn’t physically store the files, even though you can see the images on it. You get free space to start, but you have to pay for more once you fill it up.
When you delete a backed-up or synced photo—on iPhone, in Google Photos, or wherever—it disappears on all devices associated with that account.
Be organized
After cleaning up your photo library, you can further organize it. For years, Android and iOS have automatically grouped images into albums based on who’s in them, where they were taken, and other factors, but you can also create your own collections.
To move photos to your own albums in Google Photos, Samsung’s Gallery app, or Apple’s Photos, tap the new album option, name it, and select the photos you want to add to it. Apple Photos can also create folders and then make separate albums within those folders to group similar albums together.
Yes, it takes time to clean up your drive, but you’ll be able to find your photos faster when you want to show them off and have room to install more stuff.
