Spring Clean Your iPhone! 7 Data Points to Clear Now

It's officially springtime in the Northern Hemisphere. That means the air is fresh, the grass is green, and that it's probably a good time to do some spring cleaning. But while that usually means throwing out old clothes and organizing your belongings, it's also smart to do some digital spring cleaning, too.

A digital spring clean can take many forms, but there's probably one important device that's long overdue for a decluttering session: your iPhone. There's no reason to keep using a "messy" iPhone, particularly since it's probably your constant companion and key digital assistant. Move on to the next slide to learn how to clean up seven data points for a fresh and better-performing iPhone.

7 Delete Old Bluetooth Profiles

You probably connect your iPhone to quite a few Bluetooth devices in your day-to-day life. And while old unused Bluetooth profiles probably don’t slow down your device significantly, they can pretty quickly clutter up your Bluetooth settings — especially ones that you’ve only used once.

To clean it up, just navigate to Settings > Bluetooth. Tap the “i” icon next to a device and then tap Forget This Device. iOS will then prompt you with another Forget Device button. Tap on that and the Bluetooth device profile will be deleted from your list of previously paired devices. Luckily, it's also pretty easy to reconnect to devices you actually need to pair to again.

6 Clean Your Browser Cache

Cleaning your browser cache periodically is a useful way to keep your iOS web browser running smoothly. Sure, websites might take a bit longer to load, but you’ll be able to clear out data from sites you no longer visit and speed up your browser.

If you’re using Safari, go to Settings > Safari. Scroll down and tap Clear History and Website Data.

If you’re using Chrome, tap the three-dot icon in the top-right. Tap the Settings option, then tap Privacy. Finally, tap on the Clear Browsing Data option at the bottom.

5 Declutter Your Inbox

If the thought of organizing your inbox fills you with dread, it might be time to take the plunge and clean it up. Unfortunately, Apple nixed the “Trash All” option in iOS 10. If you have a large number of emails in your inbox, this can obviously be a tedious task — but there’s an easy workaround. Here’s how.

Open Mail. Then put important emails into a separate folder. Then tap Edit and select an email. Press and hold Move and, while holding, uncheck the selected email. Now, because of a bug, you’ll have the option to move all of the emails in your inbox to the Junk or Trash folder.

4 Get Rid of Old Text Messages & Contacts

Unless you’re saving a text thread for the important information contained within, it’s generally a good idea to go through and delete older text threads in Messages. You’d be surprised how much data they can take up. Just open Messages, view your list of conversations, swipe left on a message thread, and tap Delete.

Similarly, it’s a great time to clean up your Contacts. It’s probably smart to get rid of phone numbers for those people you haven’t spoken to in years — or, obviously, any person you don’t remember. More importantly: delete any duplicate contacts or old phone numbers for your friends who got new lines. Just tap a contact, tap Edit, scroll all the way down, and hit Delete Contact.

3 Clear iPhone RAM

Generally, iOS does a great job of managing its memory resources. Apple designed it that way. But, with that being said, there are still instances in which your iPhone might feel a bit sluggish due to excessive RAM usage. Luckily, there’s a quick way to clear your RAM by hard resetting your iPhone.

On older iPhones with Home buttons, just hold down the Power/Wake button and the Home button until the Apple logo appears.

On an iPhone X, 8, and 8 Plus: press and release Volume Up > press and release Volume Down > press and hold the Side button until the display shuts off and the Apple logo appears on the boot screen.

2 Clear Out Your Photo Library

If you’re like most people, your iPhone probably doubles as your de facto photo library. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it’s worth it to keep your library clean. You probably don’t need those three hundred “test selfies” that you never bothered to delete.

There’s not really a special trick for clearing out old photos. Just open a library, hit Select and tap the photos you’d like to delete. You can also “swipe” across photos to select several very quickly. When you’re done, just tap the Trash icon. Then, go to Trash, tap Select and then tap Delete All.

1 Delete Unnecessary Apps

This probably goes without saying, but you should delete old apps or apps that you no longer use. They’re just wasting space. A good tip is to delete unused apps that perform the same basic functionality as another app you actually do use.

Just tap and hold on an app to go into “wiggle mode,” and then hit the X icon next to an app you’d like to delete. And if you’re on iOS 11, there’s a built-in feature that can do this for you. Just go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage, and make sure that Offload Unused Apps is enabled. The system will delete apps that you no longer use when you’re low on storage, but will keep the app data.