Move from your current iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a lower capacity device

Learn how to optimize your content and reduce your usage by moving to a device with less storage.

Check your storage

Before you move to a new device, check how much storage your current device uses. If all your data fits on the new device, you can transfer your data to the new device without removing anything.

If you're moving to a lower-capacity device, you might need to optimize or remove some of your existing content. Find out what takes up the most space on your device in Settings > General > and tap [Device] Storage. Learn more about usage on iOS.

Manage your storage

There are a few ways that you can manage or reduce the storage on your device.

Audio, movies, series, and books

To reduce your usage with audio, movies, series, and books:

Photos and videos

To reduce your usage with photos and videos, you can import photos and videos from your camera roll to your computer. To delete photos from your camera roll after you import them: 

  1. Tap Select.
  2. Select the photos that you want to delete.
  3. Tap trash icon.

If you want to view the photos on your device after removing them from your camera roll, sync them from your iTunes Library. iTunes optimizes synced photos for your device, saving space. You can also sync a smaller selection of your photo library.


To reduce your usage with apps:

You can also reduce the amount of other data with these steps:

  • Restart your device: iOS clears cached data and does other system optimizations when you turn your device off and on.
  • Sync your device with iTunes: Syncing moves over data, such as logs, from your device to your computer. This can reduce the space taken up by other data.
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