Yesterday I noticed a link-post on The Loop: This Mac app makes saving space on your iOS device a snap, and since lately on my aging 16 GB iPhone 4 space is running low, I immediately checked the app out. It’s called Phone Expander and it’s very simple to use. The original review by Christina Warren at Mashable explains very clearly what to do. 

I already did a photo spring cleaning, and removed unnecessary apps and all the apps I realised I don’t really use anymore, so the only option left was Clear Temporary Files. The app loaded all the apps in my iPhone and sorted them by cache size, putting the apps with more ‘temp files luggage’ on top (I wasn’t surprised to see the usual suspects: Spotify, with 320 MB’s worth of temporary files, then Flickr, Yahoo Digest, Hipstamatic, VSCO Cam, etc.). As Phone Expander was loading the apps, it calculated the total amount of space all those temporary files were taking up in my iPhone. I was astounded to find that it was 2.37 GB.

I could have just clicked the button to clear all, but I de-selected a few photo apps and Newsstand magazines just in case. Still, I ended up clearing out more than 1.5 GB. Phone Expander is currently in beta and can be used for free. It doesn’t feel like a beta, though, as it appears to do its job quite well (of course, the more apps you have, the more Phone Expander will take to clear their temporary files). If you don’t want an app in beta to handle your iOS device, back it up before using Phone Expander.

By the way, one neat feature of the Clear Photos option, as Christina Warren notes in her review, is that “before it deletes a photo or large number of images, it backs them up to your desktop.”

When I downloaded the app, I was afraid it was Yosemite-only (I couldn’t find the minimum requirements on the app’s website), but it works under Mavericks as well. 

If you need to free up some space on your iOS devices and are looking for a simple way to do it, you may want to give Phone Expander a try.