How to Clean Out Items on My Apple iPad

By Micah McDunnigan

Your iPad works best when there's at least some free space.
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Just because your Apple iPad doesn't have a trash bin for deleting files doesn't mean you can't clean out items on the device. You can free up space by directly removing apps from your home screen or using iTunes to delete multimedia files you no longer want on the device. If you want to figure out what to delete, you can use tools within iTunes and your device's settings to identify major sources of memory usage.

App Space Usage

You can look into your iPad's settings to see which apps are taking up the most space on your device. By opening "Usage" within the "General" section of the Settings app, you can see a list of the ten apps that use the most memory, along with a tag telling you exactly how much memory each app uses. By tapping "Show all Apps" at the bottom of the list you can expand it to show every app and its corresponding memory usage.

Deleting Apps

You can delete apps that you don't want, or that use more memory than you'd prefer, by returning to the home screen and pressing on any app on the screen. Do not lift your finger until the apps on the page begin shaking and a small black circle appears in the upper left corner of each app icon. You can delete an app by tapping the small circle on the app you want to remove. Press the home button when you are done to stop the apps from shaking and remove the circles from the apps.

Content Usage

When you connect your iPad to your computer and then launch iTunes, you can see how much memory you've used on your iPad by clicking on the "iPad" button in the upper right corner of the iTunes screen. You will see a bar near the bottom of the next screen showing how much of the device's memory you've used. It will include a color coding scheme to show you how much memory is taken up by apps, music, and other media.

Removing Content

You can cut down on the different types of media that are taking up too much space on your device through the same part of iTunes that you used to see how much space different items use up on your iPad. Click on the different tabs along the top of the iTunes screen, then de-select the check boxes next to the playlists, albums, photo albums, videos and other media you want to delete.

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