If, like me, you’re getting just a little bit tired of seeing the “not enough storage” message on your 16GB iPhone, we’ve got a handy little trick that will free up some space, courtesy of a clever Redditor.
The method is simple. All you have to do is try and rent a movie from iTunes that is bigger than the remaining space on your iPhone. For instance, if you still have 8GB free but want to free up even more space, you might consider attempting to rent War and Peace.
iTunes will lament your lack of storage space in what I always imagine to be a very droll and mocking tone and offer you the chance to go to your Settings screen. Accept the offer, and… well, that’s it. Storage will have appeared, as if by magic. No further steps required.
You see, iTunes likes to cache lots of little — or oftentimes not so little — files invisibly on your device, and the simple act of acknowledging that there is insufficient space seems to motivate your iPhone to get rid of whatever trash has built up.
It won’t do it all at once, however. In fact, most people report that performing this trick 4-5 times continues to return you more and more of your precious storage space. There’s just one more very important point.
Should you free up enough space to get the movie you’re pretending you want to watch, you’ll be charged for the rental and it will begin downloading. Because of that, it’s best to keep track of how close you’re getting to the amount that iTunes requires for the rental, and stop short of it. Best practice would obviously be to try and rent a movie significantly larger than the space you have, so that you’ve got a buffer between you and an accidental purchase of Lawrence of Arabia.
Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.
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