About this time a month ago, I went on my bachelor trip. It’s supposed to be one of those times when you can just have fun with your friends, but, as it were, I found myself worried about my tech halfway through. We were at a restaurant, and I tried to take a photo of our group when I got the dreaded notification that my storage was completely full. But I didn’t panic.

Instead, I remembered a few storage-clearing tricks I often use on my 256GB Mac Mini and started doing the same on my iPhone. A few minutes later, we were back in business.

Most people think they either have too many apps on their phone and that’s what takes up storage, but in reality, four likely culprits keep your phone’s storage at max capacity. You don’t just need that space for more memories, either. Routine iOS updates even require a minimum amount of storage available before they can run. But first, we need to take one very important step.

Find out what’s eating your storage space

Figuring out why a problem occurs is always the first step

There’s an easy path to figuring out exactly what’s eating your storage alive on any iPhone. Simply navigate to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. There, you’ll see a color-coded bar at the top that shows exactly what is taking up most of your storage space. The list underneath that bar will tell you the culprits ranked from most to least storage. It takes a few seconds for iPhones to calculate this sometimes, so be patient. It’ll get there.

Your photos and videos are bigger than you think

Your files are in their bulking era

Typically, this is the big one, and it shows up right after concert season for most users. You may take 100 photos of yourself and friends at a concert, but if you record just five minutes of 4K video at that same concert, the file will likely outweigh the photos in storage space. Additionally, Live Photos function as small videos in reality and take up more space than a normal still shot.

So, what’s the fix? The good news is that you have options. You can offload large files to iCloud or Dropbox on just about any iPhone, but Pro models also let you offload photos and videos to external hard drives, which is my recommendation. But if you’re dead set on recording video and keeping it locally, go ahead and do it at 1080p. When you go to upload to most social media sites, that’s the maximum resolution they’ll allow anyway. And finally, please start deleting your duplicate screenshots. It’s the easiest way to free up photo storage.

Messages has the memory of an elephant

Your family group chat GIFs are treated as heirlooms

By default, Messages are set to save everything you ever send to anyone until the end of time, including every video, photo, GIF, and voice note. Busy group chats are often the worst offenders. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve had to completely clear the family group chat with my in-laws (John, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry). And it even stretches between phones. For long-time iPhone users, this can reach tens of GBs, and if you only have 256 to play with, that’s a solid chunk.

In that iPhone storage window we mentioned earlier, you can access message files there and clear them out. But that doesn’t stop the issue from popping up again later. If you really want to nip the problem in the bud, navigate to Settings > Apps > Messages. There, you can change your settings from Forever to a year or even just 30 days. This is where I save the most space to keep my updates fresh, but another culprit is hiding its baggage.

Your apps are tiny. Their baggage is not

Some of them are moving their files in behind your back

Your iPhone’s apps are like a rich travel partner. They may pack light on the flight, but when you arrive, they’ll ship the rest of their baggage to their final destination. Each app has two working parts: the actual app download size and the documents and data that come with it. Most ads focus on the app size itself, because it’s usually only a few MBs. However, it’s not uncommon for a 250MB app to bring 9GBs of files along with it. Streaming and social apps cache content so that it loads faster, and offline downloads can add up pretty quickly. Games do this, too, often growing far beyond their original app size.

The fix here is a bit more varied, because each app will handle it differently. First, delete all downloaded content you currently have, then reassess your storage numbers. If they’re still too large, go into each app that’s taking up the most space and find a cache-clearing option if one exists. Then, turn on the “Offload Unused Apps” feature to save a bit extra. At that point, you should be in the clear.

These are the three easiest ways to clear your system, since sludging through system data that could range from a few GBs to tens of GBs at once is a hassle on any iPhone.