Managing a low-storage iPad
October 7, 2024 2:26 PM
Does anyone have any tips or tricks to manage storage on an iPad that will allow me to prioritize storing PDFs locally over photos or mail?
I have inherited a 32GB 6th gen iPad, which should in theory serve my general needs: take notes, watch streaming things during my commute, and review large pdfs that I don’t want to print out.
It does the first two moderately well, but it is crap at the PDF function: due to the storage constraints, PDFs tend to get shunted off into the cloud and I need to redownload them to look at them—even sometimes when I’m just switching back and forth between apps.
At this point, I know that 32GB is pretty small; at the same time it’s infuriating that it is more than four times the hard drive space I went off to college with. Half of the space is taken up by the OS or the OS data. The mail app takes up 1.25 gb and the photo app 1.4; messages takes up over 2.
I would prefer not to permanently delete any of these things—my other devices have significantly more space so it’s not important—and at any rate the ability to, say, delete large files from messages still requires going through file by file.
I worry that if I delete other apps to make room that the iPad will just fill that space up with more local photo storage. I don’t know if I can delete the Photos app on the tablet (how would that work with the camera?) but I am open to that if it will work. Alternatively, if there is a way to designate PDFs as must-keep, I would appreciate that as well.
Have you run into this problem? Were you able to address it?
I have inherited a 32GB 6th gen iPad, which should in theory serve my general needs: take notes, watch streaming things during my commute, and review large pdfs that I don’t want to print out.
It does the first two moderately well, but it is crap at the PDF function: due to the storage constraints, PDFs tend to get shunted off into the cloud and I need to redownload them to look at them—even sometimes when I’m just switching back and forth between apps.
At this point, I know that 32GB is pretty small; at the same time it’s infuriating that it is more than four times the hard drive space I went off to college with. Half of the space is taken up by the OS or the OS data. The mail app takes up 1.25 gb and the photo app 1.4; messages takes up over 2.
I would prefer not to permanently delete any of these things—my other devices have significantly more space so it’s not important—and at any rate the ability to, say, delete large files from messages still requires going through file by file.
I worry that if I delete other apps to make room that the iPad will just fill that space up with more local photo storage. I don’t know if I can delete the Photos app on the tablet (how would that work with the camera?) but I am open to that if it will work. Alternatively, if there is a way to designate PDFs as must-keep, I would appreciate that as well.
Have you run into this problem? Were you able to address it?
Do you have iCloud Photos set up to keep full-resolution photos and videos in the cloud and smaller copies on your device?
Are you using Files to access PDF's directly? You could look into managing them with Apple Books or a third-party (not free) solution like LiquidText or PDF Expert. I don't know if any of these have a way to ensure you always have a local copy.
posted by bgrebs at 3:17 PM on October 7
Are you using Files to access PDF's directly? You could look into managing them with Apple Books or a third-party (not free) solution like LiquidText or PDF Expert. I don't know if any of these have a way to ensure you always have a local copy.
posted by bgrebs at 3:17 PM on October 7
If this is in the Books app — my Books app offloads stuff to the cloud all the time, and I have tons of room on my iPad. It drives me up the wall to get on a plane and oops, that file's not available! In your case, since it’s happening constantly it probably is a space issue, but I have found no way to tell Books to just not do that.
I’m not sure how much better this would be, but you might try having the PDFs on Google Drive or Dropbox and seeing if it’s any less enthusiastic about requiring you to re-download when you view them via one of those apps. (I am assuming that the problem with re-downloading is not that you have no internet connection, but that it’s annoying to have to do it constantly.) Google Drive has a "make available offline" option on a per-document basis that downloads it to your device; maybe the pad would be a little less keen about offloading those?
posted by kite at 3:38 PM on October 7
I’m not sure how much better this would be, but you might try having the PDFs on Google Drive or Dropbox and seeing if it’s any less enthusiastic about requiring you to re-download when you view them via one of those apps. (I am assuming that the problem with re-downloading is not that you have no internet connection, but that it’s annoying to have to do it constantly.) Google Drive has a "make available offline" option on a per-document basis that downloads it to your device; maybe the pad would be a little less keen about offloading those?
posted by kite at 3:38 PM on October 7
Does this also happen if you put the PDFs into the "On My iPad" section of Files? I don't have any other hints (I've never had to deal with an iPad or iPhone with this small an amount of storage, and I could be mistaken about this), but my understanding is that files in On My iPad don't sync to iCloud, and at least you should be able to swap between PDFs stored there, even if you can't keep very many of them locally.
posted by lhauser at 6:51 PM on October 7
posted by lhauser at 6:51 PM on October 7
Have you tried loading the PDFs into the book app and then turning off iCloud for the book app in settings >> iCloud >> Apps using iCloud ?
posted by piyushnz at 10:17 PM on October 7
posted by piyushnz at 10:17 PM on October 7
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posted by thecaddy at 2:27 PM on October 7