How to get more iPhone storage
You can’t add internal storage to an iPhone after you buy it — there’s no memory card slot. To get more room, free space on the phone (videos and duplicate photos first), turn on Optimize iPhone Storage to keep full-size photos in iCloud, or move files to an external drive over USB-C. If you simply have more than fits, an iCloud+ plan is the paid option.
There are two kinds of answers to “how do I get more storage”: free up what you have, or put files somewhere else. The first is free and usually enough; the second costs money or needs a drive. Here they are in the order worth trying.
1. Free up space on the phone
This is the biggest win for most people, because the space is mostly taken by things you don’t need: long videos you never watch, five retakes of every photo, screenshots, old message attachments.
The full walk-through is in iPhone storage full: what to do. In short:
- Settings → General → iPhone Storage to see what’s biggest.
- Delete or compress large videos — try our free video compressor.
- Remove duplicates (Photos → Utilities → Duplicates) and near-identical retakes.
- Empty Recently Deleted in Photos.
- Offload apps you rarely use.
2. Turn on Optimize iPhone Storage
If you use iCloud Photos, go to Settings → Apps → Photos and choose Optimize iPhone Storage. Full-resolution photos and videos stay in iCloud; the iPhone keeps smaller versions and downloads originals when you open them.
It only works if your iCloud plan is big enough to hold the whole library. The free plan is 5 GB.
3. Record smaller videos from now on
Settings → Camera → Record Video. The iPhone shows how much a minute of video takes at each setting: 4K at 60 fps is about 400 MB a minute, 1080p at 30 fps is a fraction of that. Keep 4K for the moments that deserve it.
Leave Settings → Camera → Formats on High Efficiency: HEIC photos and HEVC video take roughly half the space of JPG and H.264.
4. Move files to an external drive
iPhones with USB-C (iPhone 15 and later) can connect a USB drive or SSD directly; older models need Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 adapter. Open the Files app, find the drive under Locations, and move videos and documents there.
Good for archiving videos. Not a fix for the Photos library itself — it can’t live on an external drive on iPhone.
5. Back up to a computer, then delete
Copy photos and videos to a Mac (Image Capture or Photos) or a Windows PC (the Photos app or File Explorer), check the copy, then delete them from the phone. If iCloud Photos is on, deleting on the phone deletes from iCloud too — turn it off first if the computer is your archive.
6. Buy more iCloud storage
iCloud+ plans start at $0.99 a month for 50 GB in the US, with 200 GB and 2 TB tiers above that; check current prices in Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Storage. This doesn’t make the phone bigger — it makes Optimize iPhone Storage possible for a large library, and it backs your photos up.
Before upgrading, clean up first: there’s no point paying to store duplicates and screen recordings.
7. Choose a bigger iPhone next time
When you upgrade, the capacity you pick is for the life of the phone. If you shoot a lot of video, skipping the base capacity is usually worth it.
How to do it faster
Step 1 is the slow one if you do it by hand. Clear Cleaner groups duplicate and similar photos, shows the heaviest videos and compresses them in batches, and it does all of it on the iPhone. Nothing is deleted until you confirm.
