How to free up space on your phone

Your phone says it's full. Before you delete a single photo, look in the right place first — most of what's filling it up isn't even sitting on the phone.

On an iPhone or iPad: open Settings, tap your name at the very top, then iCloud, then Manage Account Storage. That's the real one. Settings then General then iPhone Storage is a different meter — it only shows what's stuck on the device itself, not what's filling your account.

On Android: open the Google One app, or go to one.google.com on a computer, then tap Storage. Same idea — one place, the whole picture.

Once you're there, look at what's actually taking the room. Nine times out of ten it's photos and videos, full size, going back years. Delete a few you don't need, or move them off to a computer or an external drive, and the space comes back within a few minutes.

Two exceptions worth knowing. Google Photos and Gmail don't let you tick-and-download in bulk from that screen — for those, go to takeout.google.com and create an export. It emails you a link, and it can take hours, so start it and go have lunch. On an iPhone, iCloud's own version of this is at privacy.apple.com.

And if you're paying a monthly bill for storage, check what's actually in there before you cancel or keep paying. Don't assume it's a spare copy of something you already have somewhere else.