Trying to Update an iPhone to iOS 8? Here’s How to Get More Space

If you’re one of millions of people who haven’t yet upgraded to iOS 8 because you don’t have enough storage space on your iPhone to do it through Apple’s over-the-air (WiFi) method, don’t despair. There’s a few ways you can free up space on your iPhone.

If you connect to WiFi and download the iOS 8 update, you’re going to need approximately 5GB of free space. Assuming you have an iPhone 5 or 5s with just 16GB of storage, this is going to be hard to free up. (And after you get through this upgrade hurdle, be sure to read, Is 16GB Enough for an iPhone 6? The basic premise will work for for an iPhone 6s and beyond, too!)

Fortunately, you may not have to. If you’re willing to connect your iPhone to a PC or Mac running iTunes using your Lightning cable, you can download the update through iTunes and do the update without needing to free up quite so much space.

The benefit here is that you don’t have to delete anything on your iPhone to get it done (unless your iPhone is absolutely full, then maybe).

No iTunes for iOS Update?

If you’re committed to freeing up gigabytes of space, there’s several options. First, go to Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage. This will give you a peek into your iPhone to see where most of your storage is being eaten up. If you’re like me, the top spot is probably Photos & Camera.

I would spend some time deleting videos you don’t really need or want, then do the same on some of your photos. Again, if you’re like me, you can trash at least 10% of them without much concern. If this gets you close, maybe it’s time to get a little more ruthless and delete a few more.

If you still need more space . . . stop. Don’t delete any more precious photos.

Some Apps Are Easy to Delete

Instead, move onto your apps. Some apps are surprisingly large — and some of them eat up storage space. For instance, iMovie on my iPhone is taking up 1GB of storage . . . but the app itself is only 643 megabytes. That means there are some projects (video clips) inside of iMovie taking up space. If you don’t need those video clips, delete them. If I did this, I could gain a few hundred megabytes easily. Plus, if I’m willing to delete all of iMovie, I can gain 1GB in one fell swoop.

Similarly, GarageBand is 722MB. I don’t use it. You can probably find an app or two that you don’t use. If you don’t use it often, then you could delete it and reinstall it later. For instance, my Amazon Instant Video app is 107MB. I use it all the time, but I can delete it and reinstall it easily enough. Same goes for Tweetbot (106MB). There’s even more apps on my iPhone that I can delete and reinstall later. You will likely have a few more, too. Some games, by the way, can easily take up 1GB or more . . . but know that you’ll lose your spot in the game if you delete it.

Messages — the Hidden Storage Locker

If you’re still having trouble, take a close look at your Messages app. I have 573MB in Messages — and I’m not even a heavy texter. The bulk of this space is taken up by photos and video clips that I’ve sent and have been sent to me . . . that are stored in my text conversations — some of which have lasted for months and months, still sitting on my iPhone. You can delete some of these conversations entirely, of course, but don’t do that just yet — there might be a photo in there that you want to save. Step back through your conversations. If you find something, save it to your Camera Roll or email it to yourself or add it to Dropbox . . . or simply leave it in the conversation and only delete the images that you no longer care about.

Still scraping by?

Turn to Music. If you bought all of your songs through iTunes and your Apple ID is the ID associated with those purchases, you should be able to safely delete those songs and re-download them after your update is complete. Same goes for your Videos app — any TV shows or movie purchases via iTunes should be available to you for re-downloading.

With these tips, most people should be able to free up enough storage space on their iPhone in order to upgrade to iOS 8. Your iPhone needs to download the entire update, which is about 1GB when compressed, but it will also need some moving around space to make the update happen. As you start the over-the-air download process, your iPhone will tell you how much more free space you’ll need to come up with in order to complete the update.

If you’re still scratching your head, check out these handy Apple support pages:

About the author

Chris Maxcer

Twitter Website

I've been writing about the tech industry since the birth of the email newsletter, and I still remember the clacking Mac keyboards from high school -- Apple's seed-planting strategy at work. I'm a big fan of elegant gear and great tech, but there's something to be said for turning it all off -- or most of it -- to go outside. Online I like to call out cool stuff on Wicked Cool Bite and blog with my buddies at Man Makes Fire. To catch me, take a "firstnamelastname" guess at the url of this site.