How to free up space on Apple Watch [Definitive Guide]

Today, we’ll take a look on how to free up storage space on Apple Watch.

Unlike other Apple devices, your Apple Watch does not come with a lot of built-in storage space to store Music, Podcasts, Photos or Apps. The amount of storage space that comes with your Apple Watch varies depending upon the version of Apple Watch you own. With the Series 6, SE, 5, you get 32GB of storage space. With the Series 4 and Cellular + GPS model of the Series 3, you get 16GB of storage space. With the Series 3 GPS model, you get only 8gb of storage space.

All of that storage is not available to you, because the operating system requires some of the space too. Our 32GB Apple Watch gives us the total available capacity of 26.5GB. The rest is reserved for the operating system.

Depending on the content that you download or sync with your Apple Watch, you might easily run out of storage space. Running out of storage space may stop you from being able to download and install new software updates on your Apple Watch. Here’s what you need to do if you are running out of storage space:

Clearing up storage space on Apple Watch

First, you might want to check how much storage is available on your Apple Watch. To do this:

How to check available storage space on Apple Watch

You can check how much available storage space your Apple Watch has, directly from the Watch app on your iPhone:

1. Launch the Watch App on your iPhone.
2. In the My Watch section, tap on General.
   
3. Tap on About.
   

Here, the app will display the total number of songs, photos, and external applications installed on the Apple Watch. It will also show the total capacity and the amount of space currently available on your Apple Watch.

If you want to check the available storage space you have from your Apple Watch:

1. On your watch, launch the Settings app.
2. Tap on General.
   
3. Scroll down till you see Usage.
   
4. Tap on Usage.
   

The storage section displays the available capacity and how much storage you have used.

Scroll down to get further details on how much space is taken by each app. In many cases, you will see that most of the storage space is taken by the apps that you have downloaded media from. For example, Podcasts, Apple Music, etc. Now let’s move on to the steps of how to free up space on Apple Watch.

Removing unwanted apps from Apple Watch:

Now that you found out which apps are eating up most of the storage space on your Apple Watch, it is time to eliminate them. If the Home screen on your Apple Watch is in grid view, you can do this by long-pressing on the apps on your Apple Watch and then tapping the little X icon on each app to delete them, just like you would on an iPhone, but this is a quite slow way to do it.

If the Home screen of your Apple Watch is in List View:

1. Scroll and search for the app that you want to delete.
2. Swipe left on the app that you want to delete.
3. Tap on the Trash Can icon.
4. Tap on Delete App on the pop-up, to confirm the deletion of the app.

If you want a faster approach to deleting apps, follow along:

1. Launch the Watch App on your iPhone.
2. In the My Watch section, scroll down till you see the Installed-on Apple Watch section.
3. Look for the app that you want to delete.
4. Tap on the app that you want to delete.
5. Toggle off the Show App on Apple Watch to remove the app from your Apple Watch.
   
6. The App will now be deleted from your Apple Watch.

Removing Music from Apple Watch:

If music is the culprit that’s eating most of the storage space on your Apple Watch, then you might want to delete it. To do this using iPhone:

1. Launch the Watch App on your iPhone.
2. Head over to the My Watch section.
3. Scroll down till you see Music.
4. Tap on Music.
5. Toggle off any playlists that you don’t need on your Apple Watch.
6. Toggle off the albums located under Automatically Add.
   
7. This will stop downloading any new music to your Apple Watch.

To delete any previously downloaded music on your Apple Watch:

1. Tap Edit in the top-right corner.
2. Then tap on the – symbol to remove music.
3. Tap on Delete to confirm your decision.

Removing Photos from Apple Watch:

If you want to delete the photos stored on your Apple Watch:

1. Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down till you see Photos.
3. Tap Synced Album and switch it to a different album, maybe one that contains fewer photos.
4. Tap Photos Limit and lower the number of synced photos to as few as 25.
   
5. Or, select None to delete all the photos on your Apple Watch entirely.

Your watch will then update the synced settings.

Removing Podcasts from Apple Watch:

If you like podcasts, you can listen to them on your Apple Watch, but if you’re storing them on the device, you can remove them through the Watch app:

1. Launch the Watch App on your iPhone.
2. On the My Watch screen, scroll down till you see Podcasts.
3. Tap on Podcasts.
4. The Up Next option downloads one episode from your top 10 podcasts.
5. The Custom option adds three episodes from every show you select.
   
6. The Custom option gives you more control over the synced episodes, so you may want to try that one. You can Turn Off any podcasts that you do not need on your Apple Watch.

That’s it for this article. We hope this helps you free up storage space on your Apple Watch to download and install watchOS updates.

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If you still have any query on how to free up space on Apple Watch, feel free to drop a comment in the comments section below. Also, share this article with your friends and family.

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