If you have an iPhone, you’ve no doubt been prompted to buy an expensive iCloud storage plan costing 99p for an extra 50GN a month – a whole 20p more than before.

But while Apple is free to hike up prices whenever it chooses, iPhone can claw back some of the costs every year with a nifty settings hack.

What many people do not know is that the default lifespan for text messages is permanent – every message your iPhone sends and receives is etched into your phone’s memory for its entire life.

A woman holding onto an iPhone (stock image)

This can be handy when sifting through nostalgic memories or conversations with loved ones, but keeping every single interaction on your phone is taking up valuable storage space – especially when it could save you few pounds.

How to optimise your iPhone’s storage for free

To ensure you delete old text messages correctly, you must head to the Apple settings app, scroll down to the messages subsection and select it.

You will then be confronted by a few different options, but scroll down until you see ‘keep messages’.

Once in, press on the icon and then scroll down until you arrive near the bottom of the page where you can see ‘message history’.

Select this and you’ll see 3 different prompts: 30 days, 1 year and forever.

You’ll see your phone automatically puts all of your messages into the ‘forever’ category.

You’ll quickly all your text messages have automatically been placed in the forever category 

But, if you select 30 days, you can permanently delete all text messages and message attachments from your device that are 30 days old

Once you’ve made the switch to keep text messages for 30 days, check your storage – and you should now have more space

But, if you select 30 days, you can permanently delete all text messages and message attachments from your device that are 30 days old.

Proceed with caution if you have memories you want to hold on to, but this single tap can save you on iCloud storage costs over the long term.

This is particularly helpful for users who have had several iPhones over the years, or recently made a switch from one model to the other and transferred their old phone’s contents to their new device.

Once you’ve made the switch to keep text messages for 30 days, check your storage – and you should now have more space.

If you go back to the Apple settings and scroll down to ‘general’, you can view your iPhone storage, where you’ll be offered other alternatives for cutting down the waste – such as ‘offload unused apps’ and ‘review downloaded videos’.

You will see a detailed breakdown of your storage usage. 

Have you ever wondered what happened to those Facebook requests you never heard back from… did they ignore your request or simply forget to respond?

Whether it’s that random pub-goer who insisted you’d be friends forever after one mad night out, or an old flame you’d been hopelessly trying to rekindle… Facebook keeps a record of every user you’ve ever sent a friend request to.

But be warned, the list may be damaging to your ego.

The Facebook desktop method

First you need to go to your friends section of your profile, the click on Friend Requests.

This takes you to a page with your pending friend requests, where you can access your own list of all the people you’ve ever rejected on Facebook over the years.

If you hover under the small ‘view sent requests’ button, stylised in blue, you’ll be confronted with every Facebook rejection you’ve ever gotten.

It may be a lot to take in at first, especially if you’ve racked up hundreds of rejected requests over the course of a few years, but it’s never too late to unsend them manually using the ‘cancel request’ prompt.

This takes you to a page with your pending friend requests, where you can access your own list of all the people you’ve ever rejected on Facebook over the years 

It may be a lot to take in at first, especially if you’ve racked up hundreds of rejected requests over the course of a few years, but it’s never too late to unsend them manually using the ‘cancel request’ prompt 

The Facebook app method 

If you prefer to access Facebook on your smartphone, you can find out how to undo the hurt to your ego below.

Head to the Facebook app on your home screen, and then find your menu. Here there are several options, but the one to select is the ‘friends’ shortcut.

Head to the Facebook app on your home screen, and then find your menu. Here there are several options, but the one to select is the ‘friends’ shortcut 

Immediately, you’ll see your own requests that you are yet to respond to – then press ‘see all ‘ on the right and then the three dots again on the top right

Again, you have the chance to cancel any rejected sent requests if you want to reclaim your dignity 

Immediately, you’ll see your own requests that you are yet to respond to – then press ‘see all ‘ on the right and then the three dots again on the top right.

You’ll find the same list of people who either check their requests very regularly or haven’t wanted regular updates from you online.

Again, you have the chance to cancel any rejected sent requests if you want to reclaim your dignity.

Have you ever watched Netflix and struggled to comprehend the dialogue because the background music is too loud?

Well, there’s a quick way to change the audio levels so you don’t have to constantly rewind or rely on subtitles to hear your show.

A Netflix fan has shared a simple fix for the annoying audio issue, which has been bothering viewers for some time. 

A Netflix fan has shared a simple fix to lower the noise of the background music – the annoying audio issue has been bothering viewers for some time

Tech enthusiast Matty McTech, shared the hack to his 4.8million TikTok followers, and some have claimed the trick is ‘life-changing’. 

Posting on his account @setupspawn, the creator started the video by saying: ‘I was today years old when I found this out.’

He continued: ‘If you’ve been watching Netflix and you struggle to hear quiet voices over the background music and sound effects, it might be because Netflix thinks you have surround sound.’

If you don’t have surround sound, Matty advised, you might want to change the settings – and it couldn’t be easier. 

All you need to do is pause the video you’re watching and go to the bottom, where you’ll usually see which language you’re watching in.  

You’ll see a button which says ‘other’, and you’ll see the default audio setting will read: ‘English [Original] (5.1)’, or any other language followed by ‘5.1’.

‘That means Netflix thinks you have five speakers and one subwoofer,’ Matty explained.

He continued: ‘So if you don’t [have surround sound] you want to select ‘English [original]. And now the background music is a little quieter and I can hear him talk.’

The TikToker explained that all you need to do is change the default audio setting from ‘English [Original] (5.1)’to English ‘[Original]’

The video since been viewed nearly 10million times and has had over 250,000 saves. 

The viral video has gained hundreds of thousands of comments with one person saying: ‘WHAT?!?! this is life-changing’.

Another added: ‘THANK YOU SOOOOO FRICKEN MUCH …. I hated the audio issue,’ and a third simply added: ‘It worked!’

One user asked: ‘What if you use a sound bar?’

To which Matty replied: ‘It should be fine depending on the sound bar. You can always pick different audio settings and see what you like the best though.’

In the same video, the creator revealed a website called Netflix-codes.com which shares secret Netflix category codes that won’t appear on the usual website or app, such as ‘satires’ or ‘Cult horror movies’. 

The full list of Netflix secret codes will let you unlock hidden TV shows, genres and films to narrow down your hunt for what to watch next. 

The website breaks down each genre in alphabetical order and places a code next to it.

Just take the code and type it into the search bar, and it will bring up all the TV shows or movies from that category.

A Whatsapp user has revealed a simple trick to boost the quality of images sent on the messaging app.

The tech-savvy user posted a video on TikTok under the name @.lachief, on how to get the most out of multimedia messaging on the app.

When images are saved and sent on the platform, its software compresses the file in order to make it easier for the device to send.

While the app does this for convenience, it is sacrificing the quality of the image for speed.

One tech-savvy TikTok user, @.lachief, has found a way of ensuring quality remains high when sending images on Whatsapp 

Even if a video or photograph has been taken in 4K, the file will still be compressed to a smaller size.

How to change the image quality

In order to ensure the files stay the quality and get the best quality image, users must delve into the settings section of the platform.

The first step is to open up the settings panel on the bottom right of the app

To access settings, you must tap on the settings button in the bottom right corner of the app.

Once in, press on Storage and Data’ and then scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Once settings has been clicked on, the next stage is to tap on the Storage and Data panel 

At the bottom you should find ‘Media Upload Quality’, where you will greeted with three options. 

If you’ve never changed the quality before then it should be automatically on ‘Auto (recommended)’.

However there are two other options to choose from: ‘Data saver’ and ‘Best quality’.

Clicking on the latter will ensure files aren’t compressed and will send in the highest quality. It will however potentially use up more data and take longer to send.

The Media Upload Quality panel can be located at the bottom of the panel, where users can then choose from three different options to change the quality of the images sent

If you’re wary about your data usage, it’s probably best to wait until you’re connected to a WIFI router in order to send the higher quality images.

Once that has been pressed, images will send at higher file sizes however they will maintain their quality.