Clean Before the Transfer
A transfer moves whatever you point it at, including years of duplicates and videos you have never rewatched. Clean the old iPhone first: less to move, and a camera roll you chose.
Free up 15 GB before the transfer
- Target
- 15 GB
- Runs
- September 5 to October 10
- Status
- Starts in 16 days
Free up 15 GB, or review the whole seasonal queue. Either one completes the challenge, so you never have to delete a photo you wanted in order to finish.
Get Cleanor and be readyWhy this moment feels timely
A new iPhone arrives in September, and within an hour you have asked it to become an exact copy of the old one. Every duplicate, every unwatched video, every screenshot from a flight in 2021, moved across faithfully.
Cleanor is worth ten minutes on the old device first. The transfer is faster with less to move, and what lands on the new phone is a library somebody actually chose.
Where Cleanor helps first
The clutter worth going after this season, and a sensible order to do it in.
What Cleanor looks at
- Large videos, where most of the weight sits
- Duplicates and near-identical shots
- Screenshots from flights and receipts long since settled
- A lighter library to carry across
How to approach it
- Do the work on the old iPhone, in the days before the new one is opened. Afterwards is too late to help the transfer.
- Start with the largest videos, since size is what a transfer is made of and that is where the minutes are.
- Then take the duplicates and near-identical shots, so the new phone inherits only what you looked at.
Why this is worth doing now
The transfer is the only moment in the life of a phone when the whole library passes through a single decision. It is almost always answered with everything, because the alternative involves thinking and the new device is sitting right there, still in the box. So years of accumulated repetition move across intact and settle in for another four years, unexamined.
Cleaning first changes both ends of that. The migration is quicker, because size is what a transfer is made of and a smaller library simply moves faster. And the phone that comes out of it holds a camera roll you reviewed rather than one you inherited, which is a meaningfully different thing to be handed on the first morning of a new device.
The work belongs on the old iPhone, in the days before the new one is unboxed. Large videos first, since they carry the most weight, then duplicates and near-identical shots. None of this requires enthusiasm about the upgrade. It is about the hour you are going to spend setting up a phone either way, and how to spend it once rather than twice.
Useful pages around this challenge
What comes up next
The seasonal moments arriving soonest after this one.
Vacation Video Review
One trip can outweigh a year of photographs. A few minutes of 4K footage runs to gigabytes, so the fastest way back to free space is to review the videos first.
Open the challengeRunning now, to September 20Back-to-School Screenshot Reset
Screenshots are information with an expiry date, stored like photographs that never have one. A term’s worth of schedules, reading lists and receipts is the easiest thing to clear.
Open the challengeStarts in 26 daysFall Camera Roll Refresh
October is the last quiet month your camera roll gets. Clearing the summer backlog now is a calm hour’s work; doing it in December means deleting photos at the dinner table.
Open the challenge