How to declutter your smartphone (and keep it and you feeling calm!)

Your smartphone goes everywhere with you: it’s probably the first thing you check in the morning and the last thing you scroll before bed. So when it’s cluttered—packed with unused apps, endless notifications, and thousands of photos—it can quietly add to feelings of overwhelm. Added to this, your phone only has a certain storage space, which if you aren't diligent can soon get gobbled up unnecessarily. A full or near-full phone storage leads to significant slowdowns, app crashes, inability to download new apps or updates, and failure to take new photos/videos, as the operating system needs space for temporary files and virtual memory; it can even prevent the phone from booting, potentially damaging the storage chip over time. The device struggles with essential background tasks, causing lag, freezing, and poor battery life. Decluttering your phone is a small lifestyle reset that can make a surprisingly big difference to you and to your phone's longevity.

Start by letting go of unused and rarely used apps, which have a habit of piling up. That fitness app you used once, the editing app you downloaded for one photo, the game you were obsessed with for a week—they all linger. Take ten minutes to scroll through your apps and delete anything you no longer use or love. If you're unsure about deleting, remember you can always download it later. An alternative is archiving an Android app, which removes its core software and temporary files to save storage, but keeps the app icon and your personal data, allowing for quick restoration to its previous state without needing to re-enter login info. It's a way of freeing up space while keeping apps easily accessible for later use, making it ideal for rarely used apps that still hold important information. I have 17 apps on my home screen that can accommodate twenty.

Once you’ve deleted what you don’t need, organise what’s left. First, create a calm home screen. Your home screen sets the tone every time you unlock your phone. Limit it to the apps you genuinely use daily, such as messages, calendar, banking, news, podcasts, or music. Move everything else off the main screen. A clean layout reduces mindless scrolling and makes your phone feel far more intentional.

If it helps, choose a neutral wallpaper and remove widgets that don’t add value. Your goal is to create a home screen that is easy to use, but remember you can always change it as your life changes. 

So that's your home screen organised. Next, on your second home screen, not the one you see first when you unlock your phone, group similar apps into folders, app you don't use every day, but still like to have easy access to. Try to arrange the folders alphabetically on your screen. Think of it like a capsule wardrobe for your phone—only the essentials, beautifully arranged. These are the folder labels I have on my phone:

Communication 

Creativity 

Food and restaurants 

Finance

Health

Media and entertainment 

My socials 

Photography 

Productivity 

Shopping 

Tools and systems 

Travel

Work.

These folders are personal to me; you can create your own headings. Some apps sit in more than one folder, which doesn't bother me, nor does it mean they take up more storage. I periodically do a bit of housekeeping of both my home screen and my folders to keep them relevant.

If, like me, you're a smartphone photographer, then you'll be aware - or maybe not - of how much storage photos (and videos for that matter ) actually take up of your phone's internal storage. Start by checking your camera app settings. For day-to-day photography I set my camera to shoot in JPEG format, which means each image uses between 2-5 MB of storage. When I am on a trip or a planned photo walk, then I set my camera to shoot in JPEG and RAW format because RAW gives me greater scope for editing in post. The downside is that each RAW photo takes up between 15 and 75MB of storage. It's a trade-off, but I will talk about this later.

Photos are often the biggest source of digital mess. Start by deleting screenshots, blurry images, duplicates, and old downloads. You don’t have to do everything at once—five minutes here and there adds up. Use your phone’s search feature to quickly find categories such as screenshots, videos, or just large photos.

Back up meaningful photos to the cloud or an external hard drive so you can keep your phone storage light without losing memories. My strategy is to pay for extra Google cloud storage and have my photo app set to upload my photos to my Google photo cloud automatically. Once uploaded, I periodically delete them from my phone to reduce the internal storage they are taking up. I also periodically delete photos from my Google cloud. If I need to share a photo that requires it to be on my phone, then I simply downloaded it, share, then delete it. This way my photos don't sit on my phone, taking up valuable storage, and risk being lost forever if anything happens to my phone. If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you also get unlimited cloud photo storage, which is great as a second cloud backup. Using an external hard drive is another way to store your photos away from your phone.

Next you need to declutter your emails by unsubscribing ruthlessly from unwanted lists, using search and filters to bulk delete or archive old messages, and creating folders/labels for important emails to keep your inbox clear. When I receive an email I do one of four things with it:

Reply straightaway, or if I can't, mark is as unread and deal with it later

Delete it

Move it to one of my email folders if it doesn't require a response 

Unsubscribe from the sender.

I aim to have an empty inbox at the end of each day.

If notifications are constantly and annoyingly pulling at your attention, then go through your notification settings and switch off alerts that aren’t essential. Social media, shopping apps, and games don’t need instant access to your time. Only keep notifications for messages, reminders, and anything that genuinely supports your day. Your phone needs to work for you—not the other way around.

It's handy that Google permanently removes anything in your trash folder after 30 days. This doesn't declutter, but it does free up storage on your device.

So you've done your declutter, but how do you keep your phone decluttered in the long term? 

Maintenance is where the magic happens: get into the habit of deleting apps you've stopped using, and clear your photos up regularly. Before downloading something new, pause and ask yourself if it truly adds value. A monthly digital tidy up works wonders.

Most importantly, treat your smartphone like a living space. When it starts to feel crowded or stressful, that’s your cue to reset. A decluttered phone creates breathing room—not just digitally, but mentally too.

Do I declutter? Yes, I absolutely! I have a reminder in my digital calendar (couldn't live without it) for the end of every month to perform a digital clear out. I have 256GB of storage on my phone, but try to keep what I actually use to just under half of that, which means my phone operates without any issues, and which means I have plenty of space to download audiobooks, podcasts, videos, films and Kindle books for when I'm travelling. They all get deleted when I no longer need them as downloads. 

Decluttering your smartphone makes sense on so many levels and has various benefits. Do it now!

Please drop a comment below, tell your friends, and return for my next blog. You can follow me on Instagram and Threads @smart_phone_photographer_53.

© Mike Young 2026.