One of the main flaws of the iPhone or iPad is not having the expandable internal memory . The iPhone has various cuts for its devices and in these years the most popular models are certainly those with less than 64 GB of internal memory, easily fillable by taking many photos, making many videos and downloading documents to read them on the screen.
With the iPad the memory cuts are higher, but even on the Apple tablet the space can end soon without us noticing.
As the iPhone applications are getting bigger, including graphically curated games and more and more powerful apps, it becomes difficult to manage the internal space especially if we start to upload music, documents, videos, podcasts and high resolution photos.
Unfortunately we can not expand the memory of the iPhone by adding an additional memory inside it via microSD as you would any other Android or Nokia smartphone, but in this guide we will show you all the possible methods to increase the memory capacity of the Apple device in our possession .
READ ALSO: iPhone space management: empty memory and full archive
How to increase the internal memory of an iPhone or iPad
Before continuing we can see how much memory space is left in the iPhone or iPad by going to the Settings menu -> General -> Info to get the detail on the memory used by photos, music, videos and installed applications.
So we will know well in advance when we will have to intervene to save some of the data stored on the device before the space ends.
1) Move the heaviest files to the cloud
Since all owners of an iPhone certainly have a subscription plan to surf the internet and since you should find free WiFi around more often, it is to use cloud services and apps.
Below we have collected some of the free online apps to be used with an iOS device (iPhone and iPad) to expand the memory, if we may say so, in a broad sense.
We will primarily move songs, videos, films and photos ; these are definitely the files that take up most of the space on Apple portable devices.
Unless you travel a lot and have difficulty getting access to a Wi-Fi or 3G network, you don't need to upload hundreds of songs or videos to your iPhone.
- Dropbox
I imagine all the more experienced computer users know Dropbox, but it often happens to meet iPhone users who still do not know this online service and the related apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
With a Dropbox account, you can store files up to 2 gigabytes of space on the internet for free.
On Dropbox you can save any type of file, even mp3 and movies.
We connect to his site and sign up for 2 GB of additional space for our iPhone and iPad immediately (we can increase the space by paying a monthly fee).
The Dropbox site can be reached here -> Dropbox .
As written in another article with Dropbox you have a virtual hard disk on the Internet, the content of which is synchronized between all your devices on which Dropbox is installed and the files are also usable by Android smartphones.
Just sign up for Dropbox and download the app to your Apple device; the app is available here -> Dropbox App (iPhone and iPad).
Automatically we can configure the Dropbox app to immediately save the videos and photos taken with the camera, so as to copy them without having to proceed manually (basically only on WiFi, but if not we have data problems we can upload photos and videos also via LTE and 3G).
Of course we can also manually move the files we want to save so as to delete them on the mobile device and recover space.
With the latest version of Dropbox you can also access some selected files, offline, without an Internet connection.
In addition, Dropbox allows you to export a PDF or Word file to another application that supports reading documents.
- Google Drive
To have more space on the iPhone for photos and documents as well as all types of files, you can use the application the Google Drive service also on iPhone and iPad.
In order to use it, we must first of all sign up with a Google account on the Drive page, available here -> Google Drive .
Once subscribed to the service we will have 15 GB of free space to save anything, even videos and documents, so as to access it from your PC or other devices.
Drive space can be increased by paying a monthly or annual fee.
For iPhone and iPad we can install the specific Drive app from here -> Drive App (iPhone and iPad).
With this app we can move apps manually to our cloud; to automatically save photos and videos on Drive we will have to use another app linked to the service called Google Photos and available here -> Google Photos .
- Apple iCloud
Among the other cloud options there is also the integrated service in Apple called iCloud with 5GB for free for backups of music, images and address book of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch in a completely automatic way.
Using an Apple account we will already have access to this space in the cloud, we will only have to check the settings in the path Settings -> Accounts and passwords -> iCloud .
We activate all the items we want to backup, including photos, contacts and other personal data on the device.
NOTE : Only for photos, a better solution than these is the use of the Google Photos unlimited backup function, completely free.
READ ALSO -> Best Cloud services with free online space
2) Use the external memory compatible with iPhone and iPad
Even if we cannot use microSD cards, we can always focus on external memories compatible with iPhone and iPad, thanks to Lightning support.
These devices are completely similar to USB sticks, but part of the device has a Lightning socket that can be used to connect it to the iPhone or iPad and exactly like a normal USB stick we can move the heaviest files from the internal memory of the device Apple to external memory, so as to increase the amount of space available on the iPhone and iPad.
The best devices we can buy are the following:
- iPhone RAV Flash DrivePower USB iPhone Flash Drive (41 €)
- Sandisk iXpand USB 3.0 (48 €)
- UGREEN USB memory for iPhone and iPad (49 €)
- iPhone RAVPower Flash Drive iPhone 64G (€ 59)
You choose the preferred key (different cuts and sizes are available) and connect it to your iPhone or iPad device from the same socket where we usually insert the cable for charging.
Many of these portable devices also have apps to automatically back up your gallery and videos, so you can save heavier content in a few simple taps on the screen.
READ ALSO: Download and transfer photos from mobile to PC (iPhone and Android)
