Storage

You can add money to your Apple ID account for App Store purchases without buying an iTunes gift card. Here's how to directly add funds to your Apple ID. If you budget your app or iTunes purchases, you can load the balance you want to spend and make purchases accordingly.

Is your iTunes library getting a little unwieldy and taking up too much space on your hard drive? If you've been wondering how to transfer or move your iTunes library to an external hard drive, then this is the article for you. Read on to learn how to export your iTunes library to an external hard drive, so you always have it with you regardless of internet or iCloud connection. 

Need iPad and iPhone help? Sign up for iPhone Life Insider and Sarah will help you with all your iPhone troubleshooting and iOS-related issues. To learn more go to iPhoneLife.com/Insider. In this Hey Sarah column, one Insider wants to know how to remove everything from their old iPad so they can give it away to a friend while another wants to know if it's possible to delete photos from their iPhone without also deleting them from iCloud.

We've probably all used a flash drive, jump drive, or thumb drive (they're all the same thing) to safely store and transport our important files. Now though, in the age of iCloud, does anyone really need a USB storage device for their iPhone? Apple's cross-device storage system, iCloud, syncs all devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID; meaning that if you delete a photo on your iPhone, it's also gone from your iPad, Mac, and your iCloud account. This brings us back to the necessity of external storage for the iPhone. We can, of course, save photos and other files to another location on our devices, separate from our iCloud Libraries, but those files will still consume storage space. Now the longevity of the flash drive becomes more clear. If you're beginning to think that a flash drive for your iOS device might be a good investment, read on to learn how to use a flash drive with your phone, and about a few of the best flash drives on the market today. 

If you have an older iPad, you may have noticed that it's not as fast as it used to be and asked yourself, "why is my iPad so slow?" There are lots of different reasons why your iPad may be running more slowly than it did when you first bought it, and luckily there are just as many ways to speed it back up again! Whether you have an original iPad, iPad 2, older iPad mini, or a more recent version of Apple's tablet, we'll go over all the possible reasons why your iPad is running slow and lagging, and explore some fixes for these problems. Some of the slow iPad solutions we'll cover include how to check Wi-Fi connection and internet speed, updating to the latest iOS version, how to reset your iPad, how to delete apps on iPad, how to clear the cache or cached data, and even what to do with an old iPad that just can't keep up with your needs any longer. Let's get started! 

Seagate has been in the data storage business since the prehistoric PC days. But unlike the dinosaurs, the company has continued to evolve its capabilities to match the changing technology market. With mobile devices superseding the PC market, Seagate has developed a mobile-friendly product that combines its spinning disk drive storage platform with wireless connectivity. Seagate's Wireless Plus Mobile Storage ($179.99) device allows users to wirelessly connect to the portable hard drive to store over a terabyte of photos, videos, documents, and other files. The device can also connect to Macs and PCs via a wired USB 3.0 connection. The same wired connection is how the device's battery can be recharged for up to 10 hours of portable use.

I appreciate a good podcast though I have never cared for the built-in Podcast app on my iPhone. Yet it wasn’t until very recently that I decided to finally look for a solid replacement. There are various options in the App Store; you can certainly try out your fair share of podcast apps and see which you like the best. But my choice was surprisingly easy to make: iCatcher Podcast Player is a highly customizable podcast app that makes discovering new podcasts fun and listening to those you already love easy. Learn more on what it does and why we love it below.

If your iCloud backup failed, there are several reasons why it might have happened. Let's get started troubleshooting why your iPhone won't back up to the cloud. Here are the first steps to take:

1. Check Your iCloud Settings
2. Check Your Power Source
3. Check Your Wi-Fi Signal & Connection
4. Make Sure Your iPhone's Screen Is Locked
5. Make Sure Apple's iCloud Backup System Is Working

We've gone over creating an Apple ID, but what if you want to delete an Apple ID account? If you're wondering how to go about deleting an Apple ID, it is possible, but first you need to decide if it's really necessary. Deactivating an Apple ID means that you'll lose access to the connected iCloud Mail and Drive Storage, as well as any iMessages associated with that account. All the purchases you made with the Apple ID you're deleting, including content from iTunes, Books and the App Store, not to mention your Apple Music Library and Playlists, will also be gone. Let's go through some less extreme options for solving problems with your Apple ID, then learn how to deactivate and delete an Apple ID permanently if you conclude that's the step you need to take.

How to Delete Old iCloud Backups & Free Up More Storage Space on iPhone

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap on your name at the top.
3. Tap on iCloud.
4. Tap on Manage Storage.
5. Now tap on Backups.
6. Tap on the name of the device you no longer want to be backed up.
7. Now tap Delete Backup.

I think we can all agree that storage space is a valuable commodity on the iPhone. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to take a photo and having your iPhone tell you to create more storage space. But with iOS 11, your iPhone will give you suggestions on how to save storage and you’ll have the option to ‘offload’ apps you don’t often use but want to keep. We’ll go over what that means and how to do it. This tip will allow you to easily free up storage and get an overall picture of what is taking up your storage on your iPhone anyway. Here’s how to optimize iPhone storage and free up space with iOS 11 on iPhone.

Have you been wondering how to save photos from your iPhone? Don't worry, you can easily save images you’ve received from email or Messages. Whether you've got a text from a friend with pictures of your road trip or an email from family with pics of the grandkids, you can save those snapshots to your iPhone with a couple of taps. Saving images on iPhone from email or Messages is roughly the same process, but with email, you can also copy and paste the image from one email into a new email. We'll cover both methods, plus some quick ways to transfer those images from your iPhone to your desktop. Here's how to save pictures from email and messages on your iPhone.

Getting rid of unused and unwanted iPhone and iPad apps can feel like a chore. In this article, we'll cover how to remove unwanted apps using your iPhone's Settings menu. Most people know how to delete apps by tapping and holding an app icon until they all start wiggling, but did you know there's another method to offload apps from your iPad and iPhone? This alternate app-removing option is perfect for someone who needs to delete multiple apps quickly. Let's go over the two methods for erasing apps and freeing up storage space on your iOS device.

To listen to Apple Music offline, you need to download the songs you would like to make available for offline listening. Apple Music allows you to add lots of songs to your library without having them take up space on your device, but if you want to listen to those songs offline (or without using your data plan) you should download the songs you want to listen to offline. Luckily, it’s easy to make an album or song available offline in Apple Music. Here’s how.

Need to free up space on your iPhone, but having a hard time parting with absolutely anything it contains? I don’t know about you, but I’m that person with a 64 GB iPhone that has 35 GB of music—in other words, way more than I could ever listen to. That storage could be put to better use; and now with iOS 10, it can be, without any of my Apple Music disappearing. Optimizing your iPhone music storage in iOS 10 is pretty easy to do and completely automatic. Optimizing storage on iPhone means selecting a minimum amount of storage your music can take up and allowing your iPhone to remove the downloads of all that extra music you rarely listen to. Here’s how to optimize your iPhone music storage.

An unusual trick for clearing storage on iPhone has been popping up around the web recently. You can do it right from your phone in a minute without deleting any photos, music, or other data. To create storage space, you'll need to fool iTunes into thinking you want to Rent a movie, but when there isn’t enough space on your iPhone to download that movie, your iPhone will automatically delete unneeded caches and data from apps to make room. I managed to get an extra 1.3 GB of space in a matter of minutes; here’s the weird trick for clearing storage on iPhone that actually works.

One of the major benefits of iCloud is the iCloud Photo Library; all your photos and videos can be stored in the cloud rather than being tied to a particular device, making them available to you regardless of which device you're using. Any change you make to a photo or video on one device is carried over to the others. I love the security of knowing my iCloud photos are safe even if something were to happen to my iPhone, and how my iCloud allows me to free up space on my devices. If you enable iCloud Photo Library, you can choose to store only optimized versions of your photos and videos on your iPhone or iPad. The full-resolution versions are kept in the cloud. This feature can save you gigabytes of storage space on your iPhone, and any time you want, you can download the full-resolution version. Let's get started learning how to access iCloud and how to back up photos to iCloud, so you can keep all your memories safe and organized.