The Apple Watch doesn’t have a huge amount of storage; even the most recent models go up to 32GB. Too little space can cause a variety of errors, such as problems installing updates or streaming music.
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You can control your Apple Watch and see what it contains via the Watch app. If you are low on memory space, here are several methods to free up space on your Apple Watch.
How to remove apps from Apple Watch
There are a few schools of thought on how to figure out what to remove first. If you have apps installed on your Apple Watch that you never use, remove them – they take up space. On the other hand, if you need to free up space on your Apple Watch but use everything on your Watch, you should take a look at what requires the most memory.
To do this, open the Watch app on your iPhone and go to General> Usage. This will show all the apps on your Apple Watch in order of size. You can instantly see which apps are taking up more memory than which ones are taking up less, as well as the storage space you have available.
It is not possible to remove apps directly from the Usage screen. Instead, go back to the My Watch tab and scroll down until you see the subtitle Installed on Apple Watch. The apps are listed here alphabetically, not by size. Tap any app you see and a screen like this will appear:
Just tap the switch to the Off position and the app will be removed from your Apple Watch. Repeat until you’ve freed up enough storage space on your watch to perform an update or install different content.
How to remove apps directly from Apple Watch
You can remove an app directly from your Apple Watch without using the iPhone menu. Press the crown to return to the main screen. With your Apple Watch in grid view, tap and hold an app icon until it starts shaking. Press the “X” next to it to remove it from the watch.
When you tap the “X”, the watch will ask you to confirm whether you want to remove the app or not. Tap Yes and the app will be deleted from your Apple Watch.
Remove music and audio from Apple Watch
Another culprit that takes up a huge amount of storage space is music. While some songs you constantly listen to can be a great thing to have on your watch, those same songs will take up considerably less space, as a percentage, on your iPhone. If you want to remove music to free up space on your Apple Watch, go to the My Watch tab.
Scroll down until you find Music and tap on the option. You will see a subtitle called Add Automatically, followed by Recent Music. This option will add all the songs you have recently listened to on your Apple Watch. Slide the switch to disable the feature.
In the upper right corner of the screen is the Edit button. Tap this and then tap the red minus symbol next to the album names in the music list. When you do, the Delete button appears. Tap this button to clear music from your Apple Watch.
You can now repeat this process for audiobooks. Go back to the My Watch tab and scroll down to Audiobooks. Again, an audiobook or two you’re actively listening to are great to keep on your watch, especially if you like to run around without your phone weighing you down, but no more it’s just a waste of space.
If you see the Read Now and I Want to Read tabs, your Apple Watch has audiobooks stored on it. Just slide both to the Off position to stop audiobooks from automatically syncing with the clock.
Below these two fields are the From Library header. All audiobooks saved on your Apple Watch can be found here. Swipe left and tap Delete to remove the book from the watch memory.
Finally, repeat the same process with podcasts. Again, as with audiobooks and music, a few here and there aren’t a bad idea to keep on your phone, but more than you can reasonably hear over the course of a gym session means storage space that can’t be used. from other apps.
Go to the My Watch tab and scroll down to Podcasts. There are two main options- Listen Now, which downloads a single episode from your top 10 podcasts, or the Custom option which lets you select different shows and download three episodes per show.
If you want to remove all podcasts from your watch, choose the Custom tab and move all switches to the Off position. This will remove all saved podcasts.
How to remove music directly from Apple Watch
You can remove music directly from your Apple Watch without using your iPhone. Open the clock and go to Music, then scroll down on the album thumbnails until you reach two menus at the top- On phone and Library. Tap Library to open the music available on your watch.
Tap Albums, then scroll through all the music on your watch until you find the one you want to remove. Swipe left and tap the three dots that appear, then tap Remove. This will delete the song or album from your Apple Watch.
Note that this way you can only remove music directly from the watch, not podcasts or audiobooks. Those will require the above methods within the Watch app on your iPhone.
Remove photos from your Apple Watch
The latest source of hogging the storage space on most Apple Watches is photographs. While it can be nice to have a few photos stored on your Apple Watch for things like rotating the dials, you don’t want too many. By default, the Apple Watch will store up to 100 photos.
To change it, go to My Watch> Photos > Photo Limit. You can reduce the number of stored photos down to 25 or up to 500. You can also edit the synced photos here by editing the photo album selected in Photo Sync.
There are two ways to remove photos from your Apple Watch to free up space. The first is to change the selected photo album to an empty album with no images. The selected photo album determines what images are on the Apple Watch, so if there aren’t any in the album, there aren’t any on the watch.
The second way is to remove photos from the selected album. Only photos from the selected album are displayed on the watch, so you can move unwanted photos to a different album. All removed photos will disappear from the watch. By default, the selected photo album is Favorites. Any photos you set as favorites will appear on your Apple Watch.
Managing the storage capacity of your Apple Watch is simple. In most cases, you will not fill the watch with different types of media. Just check it every now and then to make sure it doesn’t fill up with unnecessary information.
