For smartphone users, storage limits can be quickly and easily reached, especially the longer you own a specific device. To control this, consider making some of these tips, as profiled by Mashable, part of your smartphone routine.

Determine Your Storage Capacity

A helpful first step in reclaiming your smartphone’s storage space is assessing your phone’s storage and what kind of files and data are occupying the most space on your device:

iOS through iPhone:

To view where you’re using most of your storage, go to the Settings app, then choose General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage. You’ll see how much you’ve used, how much space is available and what apps is taking up the most space. Remember, your operating system and updates will take up space as well.

After you have identified the types files and data that are occupying the most space on your device, you can begin to clear space on your smartphone.

iOS through iTunes:

Open iTunes on your personal computer and connect your device. Select your device and hover your cursor over a content type, such as Audio or Photos, to view the amount of space it takes up in relation to how much space is on your device overall. After you have identified the types files and data that are occupying the most space on your device, you can begin to clear space on your smartphone.

Android through your Mobile Phone:

Go to Settings > General > Storage to have your phone calculate the amount of space used by Apps, Downloads, and Audio in relation to overall space on your device.

After you have identified the types files and data that are occupying the most space on your device, you can begin to clear space on your smartphone.

Time to Clean Up

Delete Old or Unused Apps: Do you still have last year’s viral game or app downloaded on your phone? Has it gone untouched for months? If so, it’s time to clean out your applications. Similarly, if you have multiple apps that have the same function, such as photo editing apps, pare them down to one to two depending on your needs.

To delete an app on iPhone, long press on an app’s icon until all your apps start to shake. Then, tap the X in the corner of any app you want to delete. If there isn’t an X, that means it’s a native app and you can’t delete it. In this mode, you can also move your apps around. To exit this mode, press the home button and your apps will stop shaking.

To delete an app on Android, go to the app drawer and long press an app’s icon and drag it to the “uninstall” message that appears after the long press. (If this app has a shortcut on the home screen, dragging it to “remove” will only remove it from the home screen instead of uninstalling it from the device. Similarly to iPhone, if the “uninstall” option does not appear, the app is native to your device and cannot be uninstalled from your phone.

Delete duplicate photos, videos, screenshots, or downloads.

Move videos, photos, and screenshots to more permanent spaces such as your personal computer or a cloud service for those with files taking up the majority of space on their device.

• Moving your files to a personal computer or cloud service has the added benefit of effectively backing up files formerly only found on your phone.
• iCloud, Box, Flickr, Microsoft One Drive, Google, and Amazon are cloud options that could meet this need. Consider security, ease of use and price when choosing a cloud option on which to back up your files.

Change Your Usage Habits

Consider the types files and data that occupied the most space on your device:

If music was an issue, consider switching from downloading and storing music locally on your device to using a streaming service or joining a music subscription service. Some such services include Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and SoundCloud.

While these apps and services can alleviate storage issues, they may not offer offline streaming of tracks and if they do, it may impact your device’s storage.

If photos and video were an issue, ensure that 4K video recording, if possible on your device, is not a default setting. 4K video files are much larger than HD and full HD video files and are unviewable unless shown on a 4K TV or computer monitor.

If you are an Android user, consider using a mircoSD card to move files from internal storage to the microSD card.

Removable memory cards allow users to expand internal storage and offload files. If your Android phone does not include a file manager to move files form internal to microSD card storage (and vice versa), Mashable recommends the free file managers ES File Manager or File Manger.

iPhone, however, is not eligible for this storage tip as they do not have microSD card slots.