Not Enough Space to Update iPhone to iOS 12 – 3 Quick Fixes

Updated Sep 07,2018 | by Cody

iOS 12 is a great update and is compatible with all devices that can have iOS 11, so many users would love to upgrade to iOS 12. During the update, some users may meet the problem not enough space to update iPhone to iOS 12 by receiving the error Insufficient space for download.

In this article, I will show you how to fix this problem. iOS 12 will require 2.2 to 2.5 GB free storage on the iOS device in order to download the update. By following these methods, you do not need to actually delete your apps or valuable photos, videos, music, etc.

If there is insufficient storage space to upgrade to iOS 12, you check iOS storage space usage by going to Settings>General > Manage Storage. From there, you will know how much space each app take up and take actions accordingly.  

Enable App Offload or Allow App Deletion

If your current OS is iOS 9 or later version, when you receive the not enough space to upgrade to iOS 12 error, you will see an option “Allow App Deletion”. If you tap on it, your iOS device will delete the possible unused apps to free up space for iOS 12 update. When the update is complete, all the deleted apps will be restored.

If you are not running iOS 9 or above, you turn on App Offload to automatically remove unused apps but keep all documents and data. You can always reinstall the app and get everything back.

Optimize iPhone Storage for Photos and Videos

For most people, photos and videos are taking the largest space of your iPhone. Apple has provided a solution for this. You can go to Settings > Photos and enable Optimize iPhone Storage. This is also available on iPad and iPod Touch.

What this does is to automatically replace full-resolution photos and videos with a smaller version and save the full-resolution ones on iCloud. If you need the original files, you can also download them from iCloud.

If you want to save the original size photos and all the apps, there is another great way to free enough space by deleting Safari history, app caches, junk files, etc. luckily, you do not have to go through all that one by one, because there is software IOTransfer that can help you clear all those unneeded files with one click.

You can refer to the steps below to see how it works.

Step 1. Download and install IOTransfer on your PC that running Windows 10/8/7.

Step 2. Connect your iPhone to this PC and open this software.

Step 3. Click on the Clean tab from the top menu, and click Scan to start scanning your iPhone or iPad for unwanted files.

Step 4. When it finishes, click Clean my iPhone to delete all those files.

If you do not want to get this software, you will need to delete caches on iPhone one app at a time and manually delete web browser history, cookies, temp files, etc. if you use Facebook app constantly, you certainly want to clear Facebook cache on iPhone because it can take up to a few GBs of space.

If you have a Windows PC or Mac around, then you can use iTunes to update your device to iOS 12 without worrying about insufficient space for download of iOS 12. By downloading the iOS 12 with iTunes, so you do not need to use your iPhone to save the iOS 12 update file.

Using iTunes, the update process is also faster. Before you do, it is always recommended to back up your iPhone with iTunes. After that, you can follow the steps below to upgrade to iOS 12 with iTunes.

Step 1. Connect your iPhone to the PC using your Sync Cable. Then Open iTunes.

Step 2. Click your iPad or iPhone icon and then click Check for Update.

Step 3. A notification will be displayed request to upgrade your iPhone's iOS to iOS 12, click on Download and Update to proceed.

You can also manually download the iOS 12 update file on your computer. Hold the Shift key and click the Check for Update button. After that, a window will pop out for you to select the update file to upgrade to iOS 12.

During this process, you should get the "Not Enough Storage to update iPhone" problem.

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