It's been more than just a day since Apple has released iOS 11. While the new iOS update has tons of advancements, it includes two hidden features that help you enhance the storage space of your iPhone.
Storage wasn't an issue on Apple's iPhone in 2007 -- when the first iPhone model had debuted in the smartphone market. But with the swift modernatisation through Android devices, people started demanding more space to store stuff like their photos, videos, music and apps. Services like Facebook, Messenger, Twitter and WhatsApp also drastically increased the storage demand. Ultimately, you have been restricted to either spend hundreds of dollars to have an iPhone with a 128GB or even 256GB storage option or delete your existing content to get a sufficient space. The new iOS update aims to go a step ahead and let you clean the room without eradicating anything completely.
Offload Unused Apps
The first hidden secret in iOS 11 that allows you to free some space in your old iPhone is Offload Unused Apps. "The will free up storage used by the app, but keep its documents and data. Reinstalling the app will reinstate your data if the app is still available in the App Store," reads the description provided by Apple.
Mainly, the new feature helps you disable your unused apps instead of entirely deleting them from the storage and removing their related data. This helps you regain some capacity on your iPhone to have something else, or just to have some free space.
Also read: Top 11 features of iOS 11 that will transform your Apple device
You can opt for the Offload feature by tapping on an app listed under the 'iPhone Storage' option in 'General' settings menu. You can also use the same section to enable options such as Auto Delete Old Conversations, iCloud Photo Library and Review Large Attachments.
HEIF and HEVC support
As photos and videos often occupy large space on mobile devices, Apple has strived to resolve such issues by launching support for HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec) on iOS 11. These two new tweaks allow you to take full-HD photos and capture 4K videos in significantly lower size than the traditional formats.
You need to select the 'High Efficiency' option from 'Formats' list in the 'Camera' settings of your iPhone 7 or a later handset to enable the new HEIF and HEVC formats. Notably, the feature is not available on any older iPhone models. This means that if you have an iPhone 6s or older model, you can't experience any difference. The feature apparently requires the A10 Fusion chip.
