Phone Storage Planner
Enter your phone's capacity, how much is used, and a rough breakdown of photos, videos, apps and system data. You get the exact number of GB to reclaim, a deletion plan ranked by what each step actually gets back, and a straight answer on whether your free-space goal is even possible.
Phone Storage Planner
Your phone
The size printed on the box. A 128 GB phone reports about 119 GB usable.
Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage. On Android: Settings, then Storage.
Aim for at least 10% of capacity so the OS has room for updates.
What is in there
iOS reports Photos as one combined figure. Split it roughly, or check the Videos album for the video half.
iOS calls this System Data. Android calls it System plus cached data.
Balanced: a normal, honest clear-out.
Reachable. Clearing 1 step gets you past 20.0 GB free. The full plan gets you to 40.0 GB.
Clear the photo half with Swipe44
The planner tells you what to delete. Swipe44 is how you actually do it: swipe right to keep, left to delete, working through Recents, Random, or one month at a time. Duplicates are hashed on-device and grouped for review, then the whole marked pile goes behind one delete confirmation and the app tells you how much space came back.
Your plan, ranked by what it gets back
| # | Do this | Gets back | Running total |
|---|
Emptying Recently Deleted is not optional. Until you do it, steps above return nothing.
What actually fills a phone, and in what proportion
Two numbers on the Settings screen mislead almost everybody. The first is capacity: a phone sold as 128 GB reports about 119 GB, because the manufacturer counts in decimal gigabytes and the operating system counts in binary ones. You lose roughly 7% before you take a single photo. The second is System Data, the bucket that seems to grow while you sleep.
Here is what a representative full 128 GB iPhone looks like:
| Category | Typical size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Usable capacity | 119 GB | 128 GB advertised, times 0.931 |
| Photos (stills) | 30 to 45 GB | Usually the largest user bucket by count |
| Videos | 20 to 35 GB | Largest by size per item, by a wide margin |
| Apps and games | 15 to 30 GB | iOS and preinstalled apps alone run about 14 GB |
| System Data / Other | 5 to 10 GB | Caches, logs, Messages history. Fluctuates |
| Everything else | 5 to 15 GB | Music, podcasts, downloads, offline maps |
The planner does not ask about that last row. It works it out: whatever your used total is, minus the four categories you entered, is "everything else".
The order to delete things in
The plan ranks by gigabytes returned per minute of your attention, and the ranking is not intuitive.
Video goes first. One minute of 4K at 30 fps is about 170 MB, and 4K at 60 fps is about 400 MB. An HEIC still is about 2.5 MB. That means a single ten-minute 4K clip you filmed at a concert and never rewatched is worth roughly 680 photos. Five decisions can clear more than an hour of swiping.
Screenshots go second. They are about 12% of a typical camera roll, around 2 MB each as PNGs, and roughly four in five are disposable: receipts, confirmation screens, maps, things you screenshotted to remember and then acted on. They are the fastest decisions you will make all session because there is no sentiment attached.
Duplicates are the long tail. Avast looked at about 3 billion stored photos and found 16% were duplicates and a further 6% were blurry, dark, or otherwise poor. That is a lot of photos, but each one only returns a few megabytes, so it is volume work rather than a quick win. It is also the part that machines are better at than people, which is why Swipe44 hashes your library on-device and groups the duplicates for you instead of making you spot them by eye.
Empty Recently Deleted or none of it counts. Deleted photos sit in that album for 30 days and keep occupying storage the whole time. Skip it and every row above it returns exactly zero.
The numbers behind the planner
| Constant | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Usable capacity factor | 0.931 | 10^9 / 2^30: decimal GB to binary GiB |
| HEIC photo, 12 MP | 2.5 MB | Typical iPhone capture |
| Screenshot (PNG) | 2 MB | Modern high-resolution screen grab |
| 1080p HD video, 30 fps | 60 MB per minute | Apple in-device estimate (HEVC) |
| 4K video, 30 fps | 170 MB per minute | Apple in-device estimate (HEVC) |
| 4K video, 60 fps | 400 MB per minute | Apple in-device estimate (HEVC) |
| Duplicate photo rate | 16% | Avast, about 3 billion photos across 6 million users |
| Low-quality photo rate | 6% | Avast: blurry, dark or otherwise poor (22% bad in total) |
| Screenshot share of a roll | 12% | Typical camera-roll composition |
| Offloaded app return | 65% of listed size | Apple: offloading removes the binary, keeps documents and data |
The worked default: a 128 GB phone (119 GB usable) with 105 GB used has 14.2 GB free, so a 20 GB goal leaves a 5.8 GB gap. With 38 GB of photos, 26 GB of video, 22 GB of apps and 12 GB of System Data on Balanced mode, the plan returns 6.5 GB from video, 6.1 GB from duplicates, 4.3 GB from offloading apps, 3.6 GB from screenshots, 3.0 GB from System Data and 2.3 GB from low-quality shots. That is 25.8 GB in total, and the first row alone clears the gap.
When cleanup is not enough
Sometimes the honest answer is that the phone is too small. A 64 GB device with 60 GB used and a 20 GB goal usually cannot get there by deleting, and the planner will say so rather than fudge the rates. The ways out cost different things:
- Offload to the cloud. iCloud Photos with Optimise iPhone Storage, or Google Photos' Free up space, moves originals off the device. It works, but it is rent: you pay every month, forever. The iCloud Storage Cost Calculator prices out what that actually comes to over a year.
- Size up at the next upgrade. A one-time purchase instead of a subscription. Work out the tier you need before you buy, not after.
- Genuinely delete. The only free option, and the only one that also makes the library easier to live in. Fewer duplicates means a camera roll you can actually search.
Most people land somewhere in the middle: delete enough to buy a year of breathing room, then decide about the cloud when the number creeps back up. More storage math is in the tools index.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about phone storage planner
What is taking up so much space on my iPhone?
For most people the order is Photos, then Apps, then System Data, then Messages and downloads. Photos and videos are usually the largest single category, and video dominates photos by size: one minute of 4K at 30 fps is about 170 MB, which is roughly 68 HEIC photos. Check the real numbers in Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage. The bar at the top of that screen is the breakdown this planner wants.
What should I delete first when my storage is full?
Video, then screenshots, then duplicates. That is the order of GB per minute of effort. A handful of long 4K clips can be worth more than a thousand photos, and screenshots are the fastest calls to make because a receipt from 2023 is not a memory. Duplicates are the biggest bucket by count (Avast measured 16% of all stored photos as duplicates), but each one only returns a few megabytes, so they are the long tail rather than the quick win.
Why is my System Data (Other) storage so big?
Apple describes System Data as caches, logs, and other resources currently in use by the system, and says it fluctuates with system needs. It swells from streamed video and music buffers, app caches, and Messages set to keep history forever. You cannot delete it directly and no third-party app can either, because iOS does not let apps touch system files. What actually shrinks it: set Messages to keep history for 1 year or 30 days, clear the Safari cache, delete and reinstall your heaviest apps, and restart the phone.
Does deleting photos free up space straight away?
No. Deleted photos move to Recently Deleted and stay there for 30 days, still occupying storage. Until you open Photos, then Recently Deleted, then Delete All, you get nothing back. This is the single most common reason people delete hundreds of photos and see the free-space number barely move.
How much free space should I keep on my phone?
Around 10% of usable capacity is a sensible floor: roughly 12 GB on a 128 GB phone, 24 GB on a 256 GB one. The OS needs headroom to install updates, write temp files, and process photos and video. Running at 1 to 2 GB free is where phones start refusing updates and dropping camera captures.
Does offloading apps actually save much space?
Some. Offloading removes the app binary but keeps all its documents and data, so you get back roughly two-thirds of what the app was listing, and a game with several GB of cached assets can leave most of its bulk behind. Deleting outright returns everything, but you lose the local data too. This planner assumes offloading, which is the conservative number.
Does iCloud or Google Photos free up phone storage?
Only if you turn on the offload setting. iCloud Photos with Optimise iPhone Storage keeps low-resolution versions on the device and the originals in the cloud, and Google Photos has a Free up space action that removes already-backed-up copies. Plain backup on its own changes nothing on the device. It is also rent rather than a purchase: the iCloud Storage Cost Calculator prices it out.
How accurate is this planner?
It is a model, not a scan. The duplicate rate (16%) and low-quality rate (6%) come from Avast's measurement of about 3 billion real photos, and the per-minute video figures are Apple's own published numbers, so the arithmetic is sound. Your library is still your library: someone who never uses burst mode will come in under the estimate, and anyone whose messaging app auto-saves every meme will beat it. Only a scan of the actual device gives an exact number, which is what Swipe44 does on-device.