How to organize your iOS devices

If you’ve owned your iPhone or iPad for a long time, there’s a good chance it has files, photos, apps, and other digital clutter taking up more space than necessary. You may have reached the point where you are receiving warnings about how little space is left on your device. Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do to declutter your iPhone or iPad, free up some space, and make your gear look like new again. This guide will walk you through how to get your notifications back and your device’s storage space.

Delete your unused apps

You don’t need me to tell you to delete apps you don’t use to free up space on your iPhone, but you may not know that iOS has a dedicated tool to help you do just that. You can access it by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, then tapping “General,” followed by “iPhone Storage” or “iPad Storage.” It may take a few minutes for the interface to populate, but once it does, you’ll see a helpful visual representation of how much of your device’s storage space you’ve allocated to apps, photos, and other file types. You’ll also see a list of every app installed on your device, as well as how much space it takes up and when you last used it — all useful information you can use to decide what to delete.

Depending on the app, iOS will present you with at least two options when you tap it. You can delete or “undownload” the app and all associated data. In the latter case, iOS will delete the app from your iPhone or iPad leaving your data untouched. As such, when you reinstall the app, you can continue where you left off. It will also remain in your App Library for easy access. From the iPhone Storage menu, you can also set your device to automatically offload unused apps when low on storage, which is useful for everyone, but especially those with older, low-storage devices.

If you frequently use Apple Music and Messages, tap them because they offer some additional options for managing their footprint. Apple Music’s interface includes a list of all the downloads on your iPhone or iPad sorted by artist and album, providing a much better way to sort your library than within the app itself.

Meanwhile, the Messages app has a few useful options for serial text messages. At the bottom of the interface, you’ll see a breakdown of all the different attachments you may have received in messaging with your friends and family. Knowing how much storage space those old photos, videos, and GIFs take up can be surprising; In fact, iOS will prompt you to review large attachments. This is a good place to start since the interface does a good job of highlighting the biggest space hogs right at the top. You can also set iOS to automatically delete messages and attachments that are more than a year old. Unless space is at a very high premium on your device, I recommend not turning this option on, if only because it may delete a photo or video that has sentimental value to you.

Trim your contact list

If you’ve had an iPhone for a while, there’s a good chance your contact list could use an adjustment. Unless you are planning for a day Call everyone on that listWhy not delete the contacts you no longer talk to? Your iPhone will give you a head start by identifying suspected duplicate contacts. Other than that, there’s not much to the process other than reviewing each contact and making sure your information is up to date.

Review your notification settings

One thing everyone should do every now and then is review their notification settings since alerts can drain your device’s battery (not to mention repeatedly drawing your attention away from more important things, too). To get started, open the Settings app on your device and tap Notifications. If you haven’t already, I recommend taking advantage of iOS 15’s Scheduled Summary feature. Let’s be honest, most notifications don’t require your immediate attention, and it’s better to address them all at once rather than piecemeal. The Schedule feature will help you do this by allowing you to set multiple times a day when your device will show certain notifications at once.

For most people, this should make managing their notifications more manageable, but if you want to take things a step further, you can adjust individual settings for each app. For some of the worst offenders (Instagram and Twitter come to mind), it’s helpful to go into their app settings to limit or disable the notifications they send you.

Focus modes

Another tool you can use to control your notifications is Apple’s Focus feature, which lets you configure Do Not Disturb settings customized for different activities. By default, your device will come with a few pre-configured settings, and it’s a good idea to review the settings for each to optimize them for your needs.

To create a new custom focus mode, open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tap “Focus,” located in the same subcategory as Notifications. You can also create a new focus mode directly from your device’s Control Center by long-pressing the Do Not Disturb icon and tapping New Focus.

Once you create a new focus, customizing it is easy. You can select which contacts you want iOS to silence or allow notifications from. You can do the same for apps as well. After you customize these lists to your liking, tap the Options prompt at the bottom of your contacts and apps lists to see some additional settings. Specifically, there is an option to allow silent notifications to be displayed on your lock screen which you may find useful.

The last thing I want to draw your attention to is the options to customize your home screen for different focus modes. By limiting the apps I have easy access to, I find I’m less likely to get distracted. For example, I set the focus to reading so that my home screen is limited to apps like Libby, Pocket, and Apple Music.