As we use our phones year after year or transfer everything over to a new device, many of us have accumulated a catalog of apps that we downloaded at one point but haven’t actually used in months (or possibly years). Whether it’s a failed social network, the companion app for the smart device you threw in the trash or just Duolingo shaming you for giving up on learning Spanish, all these apps can take up valuable space on our phone’s storage, clutter up our home screens, and, in worst case scenarios, even drain our batteries.
In this article, I’ll go over some quick and easy ways to get rid of apps you no longer use and to make apps that you don’t use very often a little more efficient.
Note: the screenshots in this article were taken using iOS 16, which is currently in beta. Screens may appear slightly different on previous versions of the OS, but the instructions will work for iOS 15 and 16.
Use the Offload Unused Apps features
If you’re looking for the easiest way possible to free up some space, you can use the Offload Unused Apps feature built into iOS. Once activated, it’ll automatically uninstall the apps that you don’t use, though Apple doesn’t really provide details on how long you have to ignore an app before it is offloaded. Unlike when you delete an app from your phone, though, offloaded apps will stick around on your home screen or in your app library — just with a cloud icon next to their name. If you tap on an offloaded app, your phone will automatically download it again, and you can pick back up more or less where you left off.
Apps that have been offloaded will be marked with a download symbol.
To have your phone automatically offload apps, you can go to Settings > App Store, then toggle Offload Unused Apps. (You can turn the feature off here as well.)
If you want to first see how much space the feature can save you, then before you turn it on, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. In most cases, there’ll be a section telling you how much space the feature can save you alongside an Enable button that will turn it on. The storage screen also provides some great info on how much space your phone has left and how much space each app and its data takes up. It can also be a good gauge of how large an app is when you’re manually deleting it, which I’ll touch on in a moment.
Using the iPhone Storage screen, you can see how much space the Offload Unused Apps feature will save you.
There are a few …….
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23270473/iphone-ios-unused-app-clean-up-offload-how-to