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Last updated: April 1, 2024
iPhone Storage Cleaner Apps

9 Best iPhone Storage Cleaner Apps in 2024

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Is your iPhone running out of storage space, leaving you to wonder how you’ve managed to fill it up in the first place? Fortunately, there are several fantastic cleaning apps for iPhone that can help you reclaim that oh-so-valuable storage space. Join us as we dive into the nine best cleaner apps for iPhone in 2024.

Exploring the Multifaceted Capabilities of iPhone Storage Cleaner Apps

Before we introduce our favorite cleaning apps for iPhone, we believe that it’s only appropriate to briefly describe what makes them worth downloading and using.

In general, most iPhone cleaning apps offer at least the following useful capabilities:

  • 📄 Junk file cleaning: The best cleaner apps for iPhone are experts in cleaning junk files. We’re talking about leftover data from deleted apps and even old downloads that you’ve probably forgotten about.
  • ⚙️ App cache cleaning: Cache data can take up a surprising amount of space on your device. A good iPhone cleaning app will zap these cache files in no time, freeing up plenty of storage space for you to use.
  • 📚 Duplicate file removal: Photos, contacts, even documents—duplicates can sneak into your storage unnoticed. The best iPhone data cleaner app will help you identify these pesky clones and enable you to get rid of them with a few simple taps.
  • 🗜️ Large file management: A single forgotten 4K video can take up several GB of storage space, so it’s no wonder that large files are among the biggest enemies of your iPhone’s storage. The best cleaner for iPhone will give you an overview of these space hogs, making it easy for you to manage them.
  • 🔋 Battery optimization: While it’s not directly related to storage, battery optimization is a fantastic bonus feature offered by some iPhone cleaner apps.

Knowing these features will help you appreciate the multifaceted capabilities of cleaner apps for iPhone.

9 Best Cleaner Apps for iPhone

Now, let’s discover the top nine apps you can use to dust off your device and make it feel like it’s fresh out of the Apple Store.

1. Clean Doctor

Cleaner Doctor

🌟 Features:

Described as the best cleaner app for iPhone, Clean Doctor gives you all the tools you need to end your storage space problems in one neat package. The app’s main feature is called Smart Cleaner, and it can automatically remove similar and duplicate content from your device thanks to the AI algorithms behind it.

Clean Doctor also features an ingenious Contacts Cleaner, which searches for and merges duplicate contacts, and deletes incomplete ones. Beyond that, it can scan the contents of your Calendar and Reminders apps, listing expired events and reminders for easy deletion.

🧓 Ease of use:

Clean Doctor is as user-friendly as it gets. With an intuitive interface, it guides users through the cleanup process step by step. Well, there aren’t even that many steps to begin with because the Smart Cleaner feature is designed to be a one-tap solution.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium version starts at $3.99 per week)

2. Boost Cleaner

boost cleaner

🌟 Features:

As one of the best apps for cleaning iPhone, Boost Cleaner offers a comprehensive suite of tools to declutter your device. It does an impressive job cleaning up your photos, finding and deleting duplicates, eliminating unnecessary selfies, and even sorting images by date or location.

Just like Clean Doctor, this iPhone cleaner app can also help you organize your contacts effectively. Also worth mentioning is its large file management feature, which can swiftly identify the largest files on your device, allowing you to remove them easily and free up valuable storage space.

🧓 Ease of use:

Boost Cleaner is known for its intuitive user interface. All its features are easily accessible from the main screen, and cleaning your iPhone’s storage is just a few taps away. The fact that the app is currently rated 4.5 stars out of 5 also says a lot about its overall usability.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium version starts at $4.99 per week)

3. Smart Cleaner

Smart Cleaner

🌟 Features:

Smart Cleaner stands as one of the best apps for cleaning iPhone storage with a versatile suite of features that can reduce the dreaded task of freeing up storage space on your device into a few straightforward taps.

Another reason why Smart Cleaner is regularly among the most downloaded apps in the Utilities category is the inclusion of powerful battery management capabilities. For example, you can see insights about your battery usage, tips on prolonging its life, and even cool charging animations to add a bit of fun to the mundane task of charging your device.

🧓 Ease of use:

If it wasn’t for Smart Cleaner’s clean and intuitive design, this freemium iPhone cleaner app would never average 4.4 stars out of 5 after receiving more than 170,000 reviews—a feat that not many apps have accomplished. Most operations can be performed with a tap, and those that can’t are still extremely user-friendly.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium version starts at $4.99)

4. Gemini Photos: Gallery Cleaner

Gemini Photos

🌟 Features:

Gemini Photos: Gallery Cleaner, developed by MacPaw, a highly respected developer from Ukraine, focuses specifically on photo organization. The app offers a range of features to help you declutter your photo library and optimize storage space.

One of its standout features is its ability to suggest the best photos for you to keep. It analyzes your photo collection and identifies edited and favorited images, photos with faces and smiles, and pictures that are in good focus. This smart selection process ensures that you only keep the photos that matter most to you.

🧓 Ease of use:

Gemini Photos: Gallery Cleaner offers a user-friendly and intuitive interface. The app provides clear instructions and makes it easy to navigate through your photo library. The swiping gestures for selecting or removing photos simplify the cleaning process, making it a hassle-free experience.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium version starts at $4.99 per month)

5. Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner

Cleanup

🌟 Features:

The Cleanup app offers an interactive and secure way to declutter your iPhone storage, particularly focusing on your photo library. It intelligently suggests which photos are worth keeping based on factors such as your direct gaze at the camera, your smile, good focus, or if you’ve edited or favorited them in the past.

But don’t worry, the app won’t make the final call. You’ll have a final review to ensure you don’t delete any photos by accident.

🧓 Ease of use:

You can clean up your gallery in no time with a fun, swiping mechanic. A swipe to the left to get rid of unwanted photos and duplicates, and a swipe to the right to keep those precious memories. Needless to say, Cleanup is easy to use, and that’s always a plus.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium version starts at $3.99 per week)

6. Cleaner for iPhone

Cleaner for iPhone

🌟 Features:

Cleaner for iPhone deserves a place on this list thanks to its Fast Clean feature alone. This feature quickly identifies and queues up similar images and large videos that are taking up unnecessary storage on your iPhone. With just a couple of taps, you can swiftly delete these space-consuming files, making room for new memories and applications.

Additionally, Cleaner for iPhone provides a precise overview of your iPhone’s system storage stats in the dashboard, so you always know when it’s time for a cleanup. It’s an all-in-one cleaning solution that can help you free up a significant amount of iPhone storage space.

🧓 Ease of use:

You can start with a quick tap on the Fast Clean button, which initiates a scan for similar photos, large videos, screenshots, and more. You can even specify a time period for the scan. After the scan, it’s as simple as selecting the category of items you wish to delete and pressing Clean Storage.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium version starts at $2.99 a month)

7. iCleaner

iCleaner

🌟 Features:

iCleaner is yet another best app for cleaning iPhone that focuses on photo and contact management. Its swift and accurate duplicate detection algorithm sifts through your entire gallery and queues up similar or identical photos for deletion.

It’s worth noting that iCleaner is developed by a Chinese developer. As always, users should be aware of the data privacy policies in place and make informed decisions before downloading any app.

🧓 Ease of use:

Offering a comprehensive set of features doesn’t prevent this best cleaning app for iPhone from being simple and intuitive. This makes iCleaner an ideal tool for those who value simplicity alongside functionality in their quest for a tidier iPhone.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium version starts at $1.99 per week)

8. Phone CleanerㆍClean Up Storage

Phone CleanerㆍClean Up Storage

🌟 Features:

Phone CleanerㆍClean Up Storage is designed to help you free up space on your iPhone and iCloud with its patent-winning algorithms. In Deep Clean mode, the app can intelligently find similar photos, duplicate photos, screenshots, and more.

Photos that are important enough that you don’t want to delete them but not important enough to keep them in their original quality can be compressed using the Compressor feature. And if you’re also struggling with a messy contacts list, then Phone Cleaner provides a Contacts Manager to help you tidy it up.

🧓 Ease of use:

Phone CleanerㆍClean Up Storage is designed with user-friendliness in mind. Its intuitive interface and swipe gestures make it easy to navigate and manage your files. The Smart Scan feature allows you to delete useless files within a few taps, while the Game Mode makes organizing photos an enjoyable experience.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Phone Cleaner Pro Unlimited Subscription starts at $3.99 per week)

9. Cleanup App – Phone Cleaner

Cleanup App - Phone Cleaner

🌟 Features:

Cleanup App – Phone Cleaner is an all-in-one solution for organizing your iPhone and freeing up storage space. It offers a smart cleaning feature that identifies and deletes similar photos and videos to make it easy to declutter your device.

The app also provides a Secret Space feature, where you can hide photos, videos, and contacts behind passcode protection, ensuring your private data remains secure. The Organize Contacts feature helps you merge duplicate contacts and fill in missing information, streamlining your contact list.

Moreover, the app comes with a Compress Video feature that allows you to reduce the size of your video files without significant quality loss.

🧓 Ease of use:

Cleanup App – Phone Cleaner boasts a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users to navigate and utilize its features. In no time, you can clean up similar photos and videos, organize contacts, and manage your secret space.

💲 Price: Free with in-app purchases (Premium subscription starts at $4.99 per week)

Tips to Clear Your iPhone Storage Without Any Apps

While the best cleaning apps for iPhone can make storage cleaning a matter of a few simple taps, the fact remains that you can successfully reclaim your iPhone’s storage space even without them. Here are some tips to help you.

Diagnose Your iPhone Storage

Your first step should always be to check out what exactly is taking up your storage space. Luckily, iOS provides a clear breakdown of used storage space. Follow these steps to access it:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to the General section.general section
  3. Go to the iPhone Storage section.iphone storage section
  4. Look at the colorful bar that showcases exactly how your iPhone’s storage is being used, divided by data categories (Apps, iOS, Media, Photos, and System Data).iphone storage

Optimize Photo Storage

Photos and videos often take up a big chunk of our storage space. But did you know there’s an in-built feature on your iPhone to tackle this issue? By enabling the Optimize iPhone Storage feature, you can instruct your iPhone to replace full-resolution photos and videos with smaller versions when you’re low on storage. To enable this feature, you need to:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to the Photos section.photos section
  3. Select the Optimize iPhone Storage option.optimise iphone storage

Best of all, the full-resolution versions will remain stored in iCloud and can be downloaded anytime.

Delete & Offload Unused Apps

We all have apps that we download, use once, and then forget about. Over time, these unused apps can take up a substantial amount of your iPhone’s storage.

To see a list of the largest apps on your iPhone, you need to:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to the General section. general section
  3. Go to iPhone Storage.iphone storage section
  4. Scroll down.
  5. Tap an app to see how much of the storage space occupied by it is dedicated to the app itself and how much has been swallowed by its data.
    storage app details

If you have many unused apps on your iPhone, then displayed above the list will be the Offload Unused Apps option. When enabled, your iPhone will automatically remove seldom-used apps but keep their documents and data. You can then launch any offloaded app as you would normally, and the missing app will be downloaded from the App Store.

Good to know: Messenger apps are known for taking up a lot of storage space because they often automatically download shared multimedia files to your device.

Clear your Browser Cache

Web browsers like Safari store data to speed up the loading process of websites. Over time, this stored cache can consume a considerable portion of your storage.

Fortunately, you can clear it in no time:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to the Safari section.safari settings
  3. Scroll down and tap the Clear History and Website data option.clear history

Because all web browsers that you can download in the App Store are based on Safari, cleaning its cache is enough to achieve the desired results regardless of which web browser you actually use the most.

Note: By following the steps above, you will also be logged out from websites you’ve been signed in because the Clean History and Website data option deletes cookies, so make sure you remember your login credentials!

FAQ

After a lot of research, we’ve identified the following best iPhone cleaner apps that you can download in 2024:

  1. Clean Doctor
  2. Boost Cleaner
  3. Smart Cleaner
Yes, there are! In fact, all iPhone cleaner apps recommended in this article can be downloaded for free. However, they do lock some features behind in-app purchases.
Yes, it’s generally safe to clean iPhone system data, such as cache files and junk files, using a reliable cleaning app. Of course, it’s not safe to mess with core system files that are integral to the operation of your iPhone’s operating system.

Conclusion

Cleaning your iPhone’s storage doesn’t have to be a time-consuming process. With the help of the right app, you can free up space, manage your photos, delete duplicates, and improve your device’s overall performance in no time. Just make sure to think twice before you tap the Delete button!

David Morelo is a tech-focused content writer with the ability to turn complex topics into easily digestible pieces of information. When he’s not writing for onMac, he spends his time creating content for SMBs and enterprises across the IT sector, focusing primarily on data backup and disaster recovery, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things.
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