Are you getting worrisome warnings about your phone’s storage space? 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 to doing just that using free tools that are probably already on your phone.
Check storage
Begin your cleaning process by noting the space on your device and what is filling it.
On many Android devices, open the Settings app and select Storage to check your available space.
On a Samsung Galaxy device, open the Settings app, select Device care or Device maintenance, then tap Storage. On some phones, you can scroll down to Storage.
On an iPhone, open the Settings app and select General, then iPhone Storage to see how much space is left on your phone. The steps are similar for an iPad.
Remove duplicates
Removing identical copies of photos is an easy way to get back some ground. While there are paid apps that can collect duplicate files of all types (including Duplicates Cleaner for Android or Phone Cleaner for iOS), consider free options on your phone.
In Apple’s Photos app on iOS, tap the Albums icon at the bottom of the screen and scroll down to the Utilities area. Tap Duplicates. The next screen shows photos and videos with multiple copies in your library, all next to a Merge button. Merge preserves the highest-resolution copy (and embedded information) and moves lower-resolution versions to the app’s Recently Deleted album.
Samsung has a similar tool to find duplicate files on its Galaxy devices. Tap the My Files icon and choose Scan Storage from the menu. On the next screen, select Duplicate Files to see the list.
Google Photos has a duplicate detection feature designed to spot an identical photo and prevent it from being added to your library. With Google’s Files app for Android (free in the Play Store if you don’t already have it installed), you can quickly check for duplicate photos and get other suggestions for removing files.
Open the Files app, tap the Menu icon in the top-left corner, and choose Clean. The next screen offers a variety of items you can delete to save space, including duplicates, downloads, screenshots, infrequently used apps, and large files.
Personal opinion
It can be tedious, but scrolling down and manually deleting irrelevant items is a precise way to prune your photos and videos. If you have a huge library, breaking the project into daily sessions while you’re on public transport (or waiting) gradually whittles down your collection. Don’t forget to check out third-party photo apps that store images, too.
A deleted photo doesn’t disappear immediately. Most systems keep all recently deleted photos and videos for at least 30 days before they’re permanently deleted, unless you manually empty the Recycle Bin or Deleted Items folder.
If you have photos you want to keep and aren’t using online backup, export copies to a computer via email, Android Quick Share, Apple AirDrop, or another transfer method. (And make sure you have a backup system in place for your computer.)
Take suggestions
Need more help? Apple’s support site has tips, and the iPhone Storage screen has recommendations for purging old files and apps. Samsung’s site has ideas for Galaxy owners. In user account settings, Google Photos has Free Up Space and Manage Storage tools that list files to review 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, which allows you to reclaim space on your phone when you offload the files.
iCloud for Apple Photos, Google Photos, Samsung Cloud, or a service like Dropbox free up space because the device doesn’t physically store the files, although you can see the images on it. You get a free amount of space at first, but you have to pay for more once you’ve used it up.
When you delete a backed up or synced photo (on an iPhone, in Google Photos, or elsewhere), it disappears from all devices connected to that account.
Get sorted
After cleaning up your photo library, you can organize it further. For years, Android and iOS have automatically grouped images into albums based on their content, 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 Photos, tap the option for a new album, name it, and select the photos you want to add to it. Apple Photos can also create folders, and then create separate albums within those folders to group similar albums together.
Yes, it takes time to declutter your device, but you’ll be able to find your photos faster when you want to show them off and have room to put more stuff on.
This article was originally published on nytimes.com. Read it here.
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