RydopHow to free up space on iPhone
Open Settings, tap General, then iPhone Storage. The bar at the top shows what fills your iPhone, and the list below puts the biggest apps first. Start there: offload apps you don’t use, keep messages for a year instead of forever, turn on Optimize iPhone Storage if you use iCloud Photos, and clear out duplicates, screenshots and large videos. Then empty Recently Deleted in Photos, or the space stays taken for 30 days.
See what takes up the space
- Open Settings and tap General.
- Tap iPhone Storage. The bar shows how much each category uses, such as Apps, Photos, Messages and System Data.
- Under the bar, tap Show All to see the recommendations. Tap Enable to turn one on, or tap it to review what it would delete.
- Below that, every app is listed with the space it takes, biggest first. Tap one for the details.
These steps follow Apple’s guide How to check the storage on your iPhone and iPad.
Offload the apps you don’t use
Tap an app in the list and choose Offload App. The app itself is removed, but its documents and data stay, and they come back when you install it again. Delete App removes the data too. The recommendation Offload Unused Apps does this by itself for apps you don’t use when space runs low.
Look at the apps with the most Documents & Data: podcast, music, map and streaming apps keep downloads that you can often delete inside the app.
Messages: old photos and videos in chats
- Open the Messages settings (on iOS 18 and later: Settings › Apps › Messages), tap Keep Messages and choose 1 Year or 30 Days instead of Forever. Older messages and their attachments are deleted.
- In iPhone Storage, tap Messages. It lists photos, videos and other attachments from your chats with the biggest first, so you can select the ones you don’t need and delete them.
- If you use Messages in iCloud, deleting removes the messages on all your devices.
Photos: usually the biggest part
If you use iCloud Photos, the quickest win is Optimize iPhone Storage: in Settings, tap your name, then iCloud and Photos, and choose it. Your iPhone then keeps smaller versions and the originals stay in iCloud, starting with the photos you open least (Apple: Use iCloud Photos). It needs enough iCloud storage for your whole library.
Without iCloud Photos, it comes down to deleting what you don’t need:
- Duplicates: Photos finds them under Collections › Utilities › Duplicates. See how to delete duplicate photos on iPhone.
- Videos and screenshots: both are under Collections › Media Types. Videos usually take the most space; Settings › Camera › Record Video shows how much a minute takes at each quality.
- The rest: how to clean up photos on iPhone, step by step.
Deleted photos stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days and still take up space. To get it back now, open Recently Deleted under Collections › Utilities, unlock it, tap Select and choose Delete All.
System Data, and what you can’t clear
System Data holds caches, logs, Siri voices, fonts, dictionaries and the Spotlight index. You can’t delete it yourself: iOS removes cached and temporary files when it needs the space. The same goes for “junk files”. iPhone apps can’t reach other apps’ files, so no cleaner app can clear them (see is the Cleanup app safe?).
Where Rydop helps
The photos are the slow part, and that’s what Rydop does, on your iPhone. It shows how much it can free in each category, then lets you go through them:
- Similar photos grouped, with the sharpest one marked to keep, and duplicates across the whole library.
- Large videos sorted by size, with the size on each, and screenshots oldest first.
- Swipe through your camera roll a month at a time: left to delete, right to keep.
- Nothing is deleted until you tap Delete and iOS asks you to confirm, and everything stays in Recently Deleted for 30 days.
Rydop costs $1.99 once, with no ads and no subscription. It has no account and uploads nothing, and its App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected”.