I think you’ll agree with me when I say that it’s hard and confusing to find things on a cluttered phone. Add to that, reducing storage space and an exceedingly slow phone is a headache no aspirin can solve! Well, as strong as that desire to smash your phone on a wall may be, don’t do it just yet because I have listed 13 ways you can declutter your phone today! Just take an hour out of your day to follow these 13 steps to declutter your phone, and you should have a phone that’s smarter than Einstein!

Trade unused apps for storage space

Alright! Here’s a quick rule I follow when it comes to decluttering. It might sound a little familiar because I learnt it from the famous sitcom ‘How I met your mother?’ and it goes something like this, “if you haven’t used something in the last year, then you probably don’t need it!” It’s as simple as it sounds! If you haven’t used an app in the past year or even in the past six months, then you probably aren’t going to use it, like ever! So why on earth would you want to hold on to it?! Let it go!

Delete all the applications you haven’t used in the past six months. I promise you’ll save a ton of space by letting go of what’s not needed. I know! I know! You aren’t the only one who does it! We are all guilty of it! We all have apps we haven’t used in the past six months, but somehow, when the time to declutter comes, we keep them! Don’t make that mistake! Delete them and lay the ground for more decluttering of your phone!

Limit home screen for apps to increase speed

The second thing you should do asap to declutter your phone is to reduce the home screen to house apps! That’s no secret! The more screens you have to house apps, the slower your phone becomes! And not just that, your phone also glitches and acts all crazy! You don’t want that!

The smoother your phone runs, the better the experience on it. And that boils down to two things you can do. One, you can delete all the apps or two, which is more practical than deleting all the apps, is to organise your home screen by creating folders and using widgets. Which will not only help you declutter the visual clutter but will also help in staying organized.

Declutter your gallery to let your phone breathe!

Underexposed photos, blurry images, downloaded quotes that you can google anytime, screenshots you took to send your BFF, and duplicate images are some of the things sittings in your gallery eating away space like an old cockroach! You don’t need it! Really! Think about it! Do you really need a mess that clutters your brain? If the answer is ‘yes’, then keep it! But if the answer is ‘no’, then select multiple, bulk delete, and press confirm on the screen!

Use cloud storage to decrease storage stress

If you are a photographer at heart and like clicking 4k photos every time you are at a restaurant or outside, then it’s no surprise that your phone is clogged, like your head on a bad day at work! Now how on earth do you unclog it?! Simple! Use cloud storage to store all your photos and videos! Or consider buying an external hard drive to store them. That way, your gallery is clean, your phone is happy, and you can click away as your heart desires.

Get a new hard drive

Delete doppelganger apps for clarity

Do you have Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera all at the same time? Or maybe other doppelganger apps? But why? Why do you need all these apps that perform the same function to clutter your phone? Mostly when you only use one among the sea of doppelgangers? Now, do you understand what I mean by doppelganger apps? These are all the apps that perform the same function with different app icons and aesthetics. But you barely need them. Some of these apps are pre-installed on your phone without your knowledge. Do me a favour, and please uninstall them now! So your phone can breathe the air of clarity!

Go ‘Lite’ on your phone for storage health

Remember the time when applications were just a couple of megabytes big? Today those megabytes have become gigabytes, calmly eating away the storage space on your phone every time you update, cluttering it! Thankfully there are solutions! Heard of ‘Lite’ apps? The lite version of an application is similar to the mother application but takes up lesser space and battles memory issues! Many major applications today, including Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, LinkedIn and others, have lite versions that you can trade for bigger-sized mother applications that get bigger and bigger with every update!

Bulk delete old numbers to free up space

Robin 1, Robin 2, Robin New, Robin home, Robin (why the heck do you change your number so often), sounds similar? We all have that one friend or family member who keeps changing their number now and then. If you have been carrying the same number for more than five years, then you most definitely would have accumulated a million numbers of the same person. Although this might not seem like a problem upfront, they are definitely cluttering your phone. And this has to be decluttered asap. There are two benefits to this. One, you’ll finally know which number that ‘fickle-minded’ friend of yours is using. Second, your phone is clutter free! So, Delete them! Delete them all at once! But be sure to know which one Robin (that friend) is using right now!

Choose subscription models over MP3 files

Ok, I get it! You are a big fat melomaniac (I mean someone who loves music, not that you are crazy!) who has stacked up millions of MP3 files that you just cannot seem to let go of! I get it! But clogging your phone with more and more MP3 files is doing no good to you and your phone. I would like to put this as politely as possible, stop it! Just transfer your mp3 file collection to a hard disk and switch to a music subscription! Spotify’s monthly subscription is a great place to start, by the way!

Quit call recording to create storage space

Alright, Sherlock Holmes! Your dark fantasy of a possible lawsuit from your friend is close to impossible. You can record as much as you can but nobody is going to file a lawsuit against you over an argument you had with your best bud over which football team is better! Now the question that exists here is, ‘do you really need to record all those calls?’ Of course, you may want to store and treasure that late-night conversation you had with your long-distance boyfriend or girlfriend or a close friend (depending on your relationship status) but you probably really don’t need that seconds of conversation recording between you and that telemarketer that’s trying to sell you a new credit card! So delete it! Take a deep breath and press declutter my phone!

Connect your games to Facebook to declutter your phone

Stuck between don’t want to keep the gaming apps but don’t want to lose the game progress? Don’t worry! I have got a solution for that too! Go to your game and log in to Facebook. And congrats! Now you have successfully backed up your game, that’s free to uninstall without losing any progress! Now you can play your games directly from Facebook without starting over. Even better, is that you don’t even have to install your game when you want to play. Just tap login to Facebook, and voila! You have your game ready to play exactly where you left it off! Thank me in the comments!

Delete wasteful documents and .apx files to declutter your phone

Have you ever cared to look at your documents folder? No? You probably should! Because deep in the rabbit hole, you’ll find documents from the middle ages that you have been unknowingly accumulating from third-party apps that you downloaded off of a browser! Worst case scenario, there might be a virus hiding somewhere down there! So, delete all the wasteful documents and .apx files to declutter your phone!

Delete app backups created for uninstalled apps

You may not know this, but every time you install an app, a file is created in your phone memory to backup the elements and memories from that app . When you uninstall an app, although the app disappears from your home screen, the elements and memories of that app still remains deep in the files of your phone memory. Slowly eating away the space and cluttering it! So to perform a deep declutter of your phone, you may want to clear all those files from your phone memory,

Sweeping and mopping to declutter your phone

My last and final tip for decluttering your phone is to use a cleaning tool to clear cache files and other junk from your phone. Most of the phones have a cleaning tool built in these days! But in case you don’t have a tool built-in, you may want to install one asap, which will help you clean up all the cache and unwanted files from your phone.

Alright, homies! So there you go! There you have 13 tips on how to declutter your phone and increase your phone speed. But that’s just one step towards an organised phone! Next, let me help you organise your phone, so you can find what you are looking for with a click.