Forgotten Screenshots and 4 Other Things You Should Delete from Your Phone

Here are got five iPhone space-wasters you'll feel no pain sending into the void—to make room for more mostly useless #content, of course.

Human body, Blazer, Street fashion, Bag, Cuff, Button, Shoulder bag,
Human body, Blazer, Street fashion, Bag, Cuff, Button, Shoulder bag,
(Image credit: Getty, design by Betsy Farrell)

Before recent-ish developments rendered the below Instagram irrelevant, you would have to reenact the Judgment of Solomon every time the "storage full" warning came up. What stays? What precious memories go into the digital waste bin? Why wouldn't they let us get rid of the News app?

Circumstances have since improved, but the quest for more storage (for documenting every exhilarating second of your life) never ends. But hold on to your edible-flowered avocado toast, my snap-happy friends. Here, we've got five space-wasters you'll feel no pain sending into the void—to make room for more mostly useless #content, of course.

1. Old Mail

Sure, the stock Mail app will keep every last piece of erectile-dysfunction-meds spam but lose an extremely important, awful email I thought I had archived for my future biographers to use against me. Whatever! Since it's 99 percent junk anyway, clear your mail cache and data to free up, like, 75 brunches' worth of room.

Here's how you go about it: Open Settings, go to Mail, Contacts, Calendar, select your busiest email account, delete, and re-add. Takes a bit of typing (and remembering those damn passwords), but your phone will be better for it. Plus, the author of the future NYT best-seller [Your Name Here]: It Was Lit, Fam doesn't need to know everything.

2. The Above but with Music and Movies

With iTunes, you will have to find the cord that sticks into your computer to re-sync. Tough, we know. And while you're in there, delete any songs you always skip and movies you didn't even know you had. (Looking at you/U2.)

3. Texts from Forever Ago

Settings, Messages, Keep Messages. Go from "Forever" to "30 Days," because people these days are more likely to repeat a question than scroll up to find the answer themselves, and with this trick, you'll have the space for screenshots, otherwise known as receipts, otherwise known as the real weapons of mass destruction.

4. Last Year's July 4 Fireworks, Which We Promise You Will Never Watch Again, No Matter How Great a View You Had

However, in this same category, there are several other types of media that weigh like a technological and psychological albatross 'round one's neck. Tinder screenshots that aren't funny anymore and actually give you indigestion when you look at them, concert footage unless it is Beyoncé-caliber, and saved Snapchat selfies older than two months. And unpublished food pics—nobody cares, not even you, who eventually slurped and digested and forgot the bucatini you lovingly styled but hadn't gotten around to saturating.

5. The Stocks App (Finally)

With regular iOS updates, all things are possible.

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Chelsea Peng
Assistant Editor

Chelsea Peng is a writer and editor who was formerly the assistant editor at MarieClaire.com. She's also worked for The Strategist and Refinery29, and is a graduate of Northwestern University. On her tombstone, she would like a GIF of herself that's better than the one that already exists on the Internet and a free fro-yo machine. Besides frozen dairy products, she's into pirates, carbs, Balzac, and snacking so hard she has to go lie down.