How to free up dead space on your iPhone

Is your iPhone running low on storage space? You're probably not the only one! Fortunately, you might be able to stretch your iPhone's internal drive a little bit further without having to delete any apps, videos or photos.

A trick recently popularised by Reddit user eavesdroppingyou has proved effective at freeing up dead space on smaller capacity iPhones. When your iPhone gets down to single digits of free storage, attempting to rent a movie that takes up more room than you have left will begin to clear cached data. This includes files that may have been used to update iOS, local copies of songs that you've streamed through Apple Music, browser history, and incomplete iCloud backups.

To do this, you'll need to open up the iTunes Store app on your iPhone. Next you'll want to search for a large movie, such as the extended version of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (a massive 9.95GB download in Full HD). Make sure the movie is larger than the amount of space left on your iPhone before you rent it, otherwise you'll have to pay for the film – and sit through four hours of Tolkien.

If you're good to go, tap Rent. If you've done everything correctly, iTunes will throw a notification that says you don't have enough free space to download the movie. Click "Settings", and you'll find yourself with a little extra storage to play with.

iPhone owners have reported that doing this trick multiple times can free up more space. Alternatively, some say that leaving the "Cannot Download" notification up for longer has the same effect.

This trick has been said to free up as much as 4GB, although your milage will vary depending on your iPhone usage.