(These suggestions work on my iPhone 15 Pro with 18.6.2. Earlier versions may vary slightly in where things are found.)
Most of us are guilty of downloading an app that we saw advertised or recommended by a friend. Maybe we even gave it a try and then said, “ I’ll get back to it when I have a little more time.” Soon it disappears off our radar screen and hogs precious space. Time for some housekeeping.
If you have some apps that are not really being used that much, consider these steps to regain some space. You don’t always have to delete the date if you have used the app, but just offload it using built-in iOS tools.
Get started by removing apps you rarely — if ever — use. To see the last time you used an app, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage, and above the list of apps, select Last Used Date. Scroll and tap Show All. Clicking on the app will show a date last used and the amount of space the app uses and space used by the data. You will probably be surprised and maybe wonder… where did that app come from? Again, choose to delete the app and its data or just offload the app and keep the data if you prefer.
In the iPhone Storage area, you can choose Review Large Attachments to help with your selection process to weed out unnecessary files. Depending on your use of apps, you may see Remove Automatic Downloads (Podcasts) where you can enable this option.
Clear the cache. Go to Settings>Apps>Safari and scroll down to the section History and Website Data and select Clear History and Website Data. When you click on this, you will have some options on timeframes.
Photos can be stored more efficiently by having a smaller-sized photo on your phone and a full-scale resolution on iCloud. Settings, tap your name>iCloud>Photos>Optimize iPhone Storage
In Mail, swipe left on an email or tap Select to choose a message, then tap Delete/Archive. In iOS 18.2+ in Categories View, you can tap an email, see all emails from a sender, tap More and delete them all.
In Photos, open the app and swipe down below the most recent photos to Utilities and see if you have duplicates, then delete what is not needed or merge them.