Written by Indira Anne C. Sowy
In the midst of quarantine, it is no surprise that everyone has become reliant on their mobile devices. Chances are, you’re reading this article on one too. However, sorting all of your files and applications on your phone is something difficult to manage. Maybe you can’t locate a certain photo, or even find random apps that you don’t remember downloading. If you’ve experienced problems similar to these and don’t know how to go about fixing them, don’t panic! Here are some tips that can help you declutter your mobile device and be organized once and for all.
- Delete unnecessary apps and items
- Have you ever encountered a situation wherein you download an app, use it once, and never go back to it again? If you want to stay more organized, you need to learn to let go of apps and other files you don’t use by deleting them. Go through all of your notes, photos, and apps and remove those you hardly use. Deleting all of these unecessary items is not only a good way to clean up your phone but save some storage as well. It can also save you some time by allowing you to locate certain apps or items without having to go through all of the other bothersome ones.
- Sort everything into folders
- Whether it be sorting your photos into albums or creating various folders for your apps, sorting is necessary for having a neat phone. In order to have an organized home screen, sort your apps in line with their different functions and make sure to label their folders accordingly. This is so that you don’t waste time constantly swiping through your phone looking for one particular app — now, you can easily access it and apps similar to it through your named folders. In addition to this, it’s also useful to collate your different photos into separate albums, perhaps by their type or by the dates they were taken, so you don’t encounter the same problem.
- Track your screen time
- It’s too easy to get hooked into using our phone for what we think is a few minutes, but soon turns out to be several hours. Using your device settings in order to track your phone usage is a necessary habit if you want to feel organized. Through this, you can track if you’ve been spending too much time on a particular game when you should be working, or even receive recommended amounts of time you should spend on your phone that you can follow in order to cut down your screen time and take a break from your device. This particular tip may also help you accomplish the previous tips mentioned as your screen time settings can usually identify which apps you hardly use.
- Turn off useless notifications
- It’s difficult to keep track of crucial reminders when notifications are constantly flooding your phone. Go to the notification tab in your phone’s settings and turn off any notifications from unimportant applications. This is not only to make sure that you aren’t constantly swamped with annoying bubbles at the top of your screen every few seconds, but it also helps you see the most important notifications first without them getting buried easily!
- Utilize the cloud
- Something a lot of people fall victim to is saving a picture on their phone, looking at it a few times, and then never touching it again, leaving it to accumulate useless space. If you feel as if you have too many photos saved onto your phone, but you still don’t want to lose them, you can opt to upload them onto the digital cloud with apps such as Google Photos for your images, and Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive for all your other files. This also ensures that all your important data is saved if ever something happens to your phone. If you want to be extra careful, you can choose to also backup your extra files into another device like a computer or a hard drive.
- Stream your music
- It’s not uncommon for us to kick back with a relaxing melody after a long day, or maybe even jam to a tune at work. However, downloading too many songs on your phone is sure to take a significant amount of storage. Instead of doing this, you can stream music online using popular platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Soundcloud. One disadvantage of this is that you won’t be able to listen to any songs offline, but it is sure to guarantee a less cluttered phone!
- Find other ways to free storage
- If you feel as if you’ve deleted everything you could from your phone but you’re still running out of space, there are other methods you can use to free up your storage. Your settings app should be able to allow you to view details on your phone storage and present alternate methods that will help you clear up more space. Examples of this are options to have previously sent photos and videos be automatically deleted from your messages after a certain time, offloading unused or rarely used apps that you may not want to delete, optimizing or lowering the resolution of your photos, being able to clear your browser cache, and more.
Following these tips will give you an easier time in navigating the different parts of your device without going through all the stress you used to. This digital purge is sure to make logging on to your phone feel less like a chore and more like a relaxing break!