No matter how cool it is to use an Iphone, we can all agree that iPhones tend to be more expensive than most Android smartphones. Because of the higher price, many iPhone buyers opt for the base storage variant. Although the newer iPhone models come with 128 GB of base storage, it’s still pretty less, considering the tech advancements and storage requirements. What’s worse? The older iPhones had either 64 GB or 32 GB of storage.

When you own these iPhone models, you quickly run out of storage space. It’s obvious that you will not be able to expand your iPhone’s built-in storage after you buy it.

But there are some ways you can use to buy more storage on your iPhone. And here in this article, we have explained everything about how you can buy more storage on iPhone.

What’s the Need to Buy More Storage on iPhone?

Before we continue with the steps to buy more storage on iPhone, let us first understand why you need more storage on your iPhone. Below are some of the most common use cases:

• Large Media Files: New iPhones are equipped with high-resolution cameras. Photos and videos taken with these iPhones fill up the built-in storage very quickly.
• iCloud Backup: iCloud backup stores a copy of your iPhone data so you can restore it if your iPhone is lost or damaged. If you want to enable iCloud backup on your iPhone, you will definitely need more iCloud storage.
• iOS Apps and Updates: If you have multiple apps installed on your iPhone and own a base model iPhone, you may run out of storage sooner rather than later. Not only that but with each update, an app’s storage requirements increase. All this can lead to you needing more storage space on your iPhone.
• Messaging apps media: If you use instant messaging services like iMessage and WhatsApp and send or receive a lot of media, this will take up a lot of storage space on your iPhone.
• Games: If you have a number of games installed on your iPhone, they may take up most of your iPhone storage.

Your device won’t back up if you run out of Icloud storage, and new videos and photos won’t upload to iCloud Drive or iCloud Photos. Other iCloud apps and messages will not sync between devices, and iCloud email will not work either.

What to Consider When Buying Extra Storage For iPhone?

Let us say you have one of the similar use cases above, and you want to buy more storage on your iPhone. It would be best to figure out your individual needs first. If you have large media files stored on your iPhone, you can back them up to a cloud storage service. You can also consider external storage to store large media files.

If iCloud backup is your top priority and you have a Windows or Mac computer, you can back it up to your computer. If the messaging app media takes up a lot of storage space, you can delete the old media files.

Related Read: 7 Easy Ways to Fix iPhone not Backing up to iCloud

Finally, you can also consider external drives. External drives are usually referred to as “plug-in flash drives” or “mobile drives” These can be SD cards or USB drives that you can buy online or in stores.

Ways To Increase iPhone Storage

There are several ways to increase iPhone storage, such as deleting unused apps and files, using external drives, creating backups on other cloud drives, converting videos to lower quality, and disabling automatic downloads on instant messaging apps. Let us take a detailed look at each of these options.

Delete Unused Apps/Files

Deleting unwanted apps and files is one of the easiest ways to free up storage space. Unused applications and files consume a lot of storage over time, which leads to storage problems. So, look for applications and files that you rarely use and delete them to free up some space.

You can also consider turning on the “Offload Unused Apps” feature on your iPhone, which automatically swaps out unused apps when your iPhone runs out of storage space.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.

2. Tap General.

3. Click on iPhone storage.

4. Now, you can enable the Offload Unused App option.

When this option is enabled, unused apps will be unloaded automatically when the storage space on your iPhone is exhausted.

Use External Drives

You can use an external drive to move large media files to it to increase the storage space on your iPhone. You just need a Lightning to USB adapter to connect your external drive to your iPhone.

You can store files, photos, and videos on an external drive and access them from your iPhone when you need them. If you need to store a lot of files, this is a great alternative, as you will free up space on your iPhone.

Buy External Drives for iPhone

iCloud+

The next solution is Apple’s very own cloud storage service, iCloud+. You can sign up for one of the paid plans for iCloud+ to increase your iPhone storage. Once you upgrade to iCloud+, you can move some of the data stored on your iPhone to iCloud, for example, by enabling iCloud Photos and deleting the photos stored locally on your iPhone.

Later in this article, we explain how you can upgrade to iCloud+.

Back Up to Other Cloud Storage Options

In addition to iCloud+, there are a number of third-party cloud storage alternatives, such as Google One, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. Some of these cloud storage services offer a significantly higher amount of cloud storage as part of their trial period. Take the example of Google One. It offers 15 GB of free storage, which is three times more than iCloud’s 5 GB.

You can use any of these cloud storage services to store files, videos, and other iPhone data. Later, you can access your data from any device with an Internet connection.

Related Read: 10 Best Free Cloud Storage Services for Backups and File Storing

Convert Videos to Lower Quality

Higher-quality videos take up the most storage space on your iPhone. You can convert the videos to lower quality. You can use a video converter or video editing software to do this.

Also, reduce the quality of future videos by going to Settings > Camera > Record Video. Change the settings to 720p HD and 30fps. This will reduce the quality of the video to 40MB per minute instead of the default 90MB at HD.

To further optimize storage space, consider using the iCloud Photo Library. This will store your photos and videos in the cloud while keeping optimized versions on your phone.

Disable Auto-downloads on WhatsApp / Telegram / iMessage

Normally, instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and iMessage automatically download media files they receive. Over time, all these downloads fill up your iPhone’s storage.

What you can do is disable auto-downloads on these messaging services. This way, you’ll download only the media files you actually need and not all the ones you receive in a family group.

Related Read: WhatsApp Media Not Downloading? Here’s How to Fix It

Reduce the Number of Email Accounts

If you reduce the number of email accounts you use on your iPhone, you can increase your iPhone storage space. By deleting messages you no longer need and setting up automatic rules to delete spam emails, you can free up storage space and keep your emails organized.

If you only use important Apple services like Contacts and Calendar, you won’t need as much storage space.

Upgrading to iCloud+

Now that we have gone over different ways to increase iPhone storage. If you prefer iCloud+ over all these alternatives, upgrading to iCloud+ is easier than you think. The process is simple and straightforward and can be done from the iPhone Settings app.

Here are the steps:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.

2. Tap your name at the top.

3. Click on iCloud. On the next screen, you will see the current status of your iCloud storage.

4. Now, tap on the Manage Account Storage option.

5. Next, tap on the Change Storage Plan option.

6. Choose the storage plan as per your requirements and tap iCloud+ at the bottom.

Apple currently offers these three iCloud+ plans:

• iCloud+ with 50 GB of storage
• iCloud+ with 200GB storage
• iCloud+ with 2TB storage

You can start with the basic 50GB plan and gradually increase the plan as you use it. Apple also bundles iCloud+ into its Apple One service. So if you already use other Apple services, now is the time to sign up for Apple One and save a few bucks by not paying extra for iCloud+.

Enjoy More Storage Space On Your iPhone

What fun is it to use an iPhone when you constantly see the warning that you are running out of memory? Although it is not possible to upgrade the iPhone’s internal memory, there are ways to buy more storage for the iPhone.

You should first try deleting unused apps or files to free up space on your iPhone. If that did not help, you can either buy an external storage drive or subscribe to a cloud storage service like iCloud+.

FAQs about Purchasing More Storage on iPhone