You can do many things with your iPhone. Taking pictures, downloading music, and downloading software will keep you entertained for hours. However, it can be frustrating when you run out of space. How can I clear “Documents and Data” on my iPhone and free up space? Once your iphone storage is full it’s one of the most popular questions being asked by many iPhone owners around the globe.
How to Free Up Storage on your iPhone
Once you have a full understanding of “Documents and Data”, it will be extremely easy for you to figure out simple ways of clearing it out. More space on your phone will help your phone function better. It is vital to point out that the documents and data is composed of the following sources: iCloud documents, third-party apps, stock apps, and cached data. In this article, we are going to cover several tips that will help you remove these items and get more space on your iPhone.
Stock Apps
If you use your iPhone or iPad often, there’s a strong possibility that you are using dozens of stock apps. You may be using Music, Videos, or Safari. These items store a significant amount of data. For instance, Safari is cache, reading list, and much more. With Videos app, the videos you download and store will consume space on your phone. Different techniques are used to remove each app from your iPhone.
Safari: Clear your cache, history, reading list, and cookies
Safari stores an enormous of data, but not as much as other apps. Cached data from sites is stored on Safari. It is also worth mentioning that history and cookies will take up critical space on your iPhone. Do you use reading-lists in Safari? If so, this increases the “Documents and Data”. You can get free up space if you remove these items.
Messages: Clear message attachments and conversations from the past
The Message app is considered to be one of the largest contributors to “Documents and Data” and “Other”. The Message app consumes a large amount of space if you use the iMessage sender throughout the day. Clearing out your messages will help if you have numerous threads stored on your iPhone.
Mail: Clearing Out Old Mail and Attachments
Here is one effective way of clearing out your mail cache and data:
- Go directly to Settings > Mail, Contacts, and Calendar
- Carefully tap on the email account
- Now tap on Delete Account and confirm
- Re-add the account by selecting Add New
iTunes: Music, Movies and TV Shows, Thumbnail cache
All of your iTunes purchases are part of the media. It’s normally found under the Audio-Video section of your storage, but some of your media falls under “Documents and Data”. Please keep in mind that this may include associated files that do not fall under the media files category.
You can clear out the cache on your iPhone if you remove your music and re-sync it through the computer. It may sound tedious, but it is simpler than you think. It will only take you a few seconds to do this. This is an easy way to free up space.
Photo Stream
Do you have tons of photos/albums in your photo stream? If so, you should consider clearing them out. Don’t delete them. Simply turn off photo stream from Settings to iCloud to Photo Stream. You will get some free space when you remove all photo stream instances from your iPhone.
Voicemail: Delete all voicemail
Were you aware that all of your Voicemail contributes to the “Documents and Data” part of the Phone app? Yes, it’s true! Delete Voicemail to clear “Documents and Data”.
Third-party Apps
As you are starting to learn, you don’t have to be a tech geek to free up space on your iPhone. It is not unusual for the average iPhone owner to have third-party apps on their phone. Unless you are using iExplorer, it can be difficult to find third-party apps. Let’s take a quick look at two easy ways of clearing documents and data stored by third-party apps.
Method One: Delete data (where possible)
For apps like Whatsapp, you can delete photos, conversations, and videos. This will remove the media, but will help you get more space. Transfer your important media to a flash drive before you try this method.
Method Two: Delete and Re-install App
This is the easier way of handling things. Carefully tap and hold on the app icon. Proceed by pressing the “x” to delete the app. You can re-install the app from the App Store at a later time. All data contained within the app will be cleared. This is the ideal solution for apps like Facebook.
iCloud Documents
iCloud documents do not take up much space unless you enjoy using the iWork Suite on your iPhone every day. Make certain your iCloud documents are not taking up too much space. Follow the following steps to remove individual documents from iCloud documents:
- Go to Settings > This will take you to iCloud
- Select Storage
- Tap on Manage Store
- Look beneath Documents and Data. Tap on each app carefully
- Tap on Edit
Now it’s time to tap on Delete All to remove the documents. You may also tap on the ‘-‘ against each document to remove it. Both methods work like a charm.
Using a iPhone Cleaner App to Remove App Data and Cache
Would you like to have more control over the documents stored by the apps? Software can help you do this with ease. PhoneClean has an impeccable reputation for helping people free up space on their iPhone. PhoneClean is affordable and easy to use.
Cleanerr and ClearMe are two other options you can take into consideration. They are effective, but you should be aware of the risks. Both of these software programs give you folder-level access. If you’re not careful, there’s a possibility that you will remove files or folders that may not have an effect on the app’s functionality.
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