The day I wiped everything off my phone.

One of the issues I’ve faced since starting my YouTube channel was storage. I used an iPhone 7 with 32 GB of storage when I started my YouTube channel.

When I started, my videos were super simple, and they didn’t take up a lot of space. I do the best take, use little to no editing, and export to YouTube. The most they took was about 60-80 MB which my phone can chew comfortably. I didn’t care about the storage bit.

My videos became more complicated when I was about five months on my YouTube channel. I had to edit more; the exported videos were about 700 MB. These 700 MB videos take up more space on my iPhone, and having more videos can eventually fill my phone. So, I must import many videos from my phone to my computer, which I must organise. I have to sort out the unused footage, the used footage, and thumbnails in the right place so I can use them for compilations and other forms of content, like outtakes.

My computer was a Windows desktop, and my iPhone must use iTunes for stuff in the Files app. I used my phone as a flash drive for ingesting footage, and having the phone turned off every couple of minutes bugged me off. The best use of time while ingesting vast amounts of 500+MB footage was to open TikTok and watch random videos to stop having my phone turn off. And I plugged it in via USB, where ingesting footage took a long time, like taking 30 minutes for a 700 MB final video. My phone refused to export some photos.

The footage that cannot be expired was the videos with some colour grading. How I got the colour grading in the first place was messing with the Photos app. I used the edit feature in the Photos app to edit photos and videos. For those reading off your iPhones, you know that you can edit your pictures to a marvellous extent by eliminating the unnecessary people in the background and stuff like that. In my case, I changed the colour settings to make the image look better and more visually appealing. The colours pop out more, and it seems like a professional video from an iPhone. However, these things have a considerable cost. You cannot export them.

When I go to the computer to ingest the footage from my iPhone, the laptop sees three files with slight variations to indicate the changes from the original file. Indeed, the desktop does receive the exporting images from my iPhone to the computer itself or whatever drive I’m transporting the idea from. But my iPhone doesn’t have the photos transported at all. So, I have no choice but to delete the images from my iPhone.

Even this method doesn’t work sometimes. On one video, which was supposed to be my first GarageBand Session Breakdown, ingesting the footage, one by one, took about an hour. When I exported the footage typically, I selected every single footage corresponding to the final video. Unfortunately, the footage would take about 2 hours. I watched YouTube to cope with the notoriously long time to ingest all the footage. And even then, the footage wouldn’t export at all. So, I have to do it individually, and some footage doesn’t get processed correctly, wasting even more time.

In the meantime, the storage on my iPhone kept increasing and increasing to the point that it could not take it anymore.

The first time my iPhone told me about the storage almost being full was probably during my first viral video. It was a fingerstyle cover for “One Thing Right”, where I reserved a few videos on my phone. At the time, I could ingest footage from my phone without a problem, which was the case after “One Thing Right” was published on YouTube. But back to the GarageBand Session Breakdown part.

By the time I’m going to ingest all the footage for the GarageBand Session Breakdown, I’ve gone through about ten warnings of my iPhone telling me about the almost complete storage. Again, I have 32 GB of storage on my iPhone, so I only have so much to do. So, I went through my storage almost daily to find whatever junk I could chip off, which wasn’t a lot. Back then, the only actual waste I had to deal with was some random apps that I could quickly offload. But it came to a point where the files taking the most amount of space were the important ones. These important ones were unfinished videos that were mostly going to be out (already out after “Superlonely GarageBand Session Breakdown” or something like that) or probably scrapped. Because these videos were crucial for content creation, I cannot delete them. So, I don’t know what to do other than to make it more quickly. And the videos keep on piling up.

The GarageBand Session breakdown wasn’t where I decided to wipe everything off my phone.

It was another GarageBand Session Breakdown, and I think this video was for “Afterglow.” By now, I’ve just finished editing the video and was about to export the video. Unfortunately, it never happened because the exported video was too big to fit onto the phone. So, I better ship some files from my phone to my computer. The main problem while doing it was what was inside my phone’s storage. At the time, the only thing that took up so much space was the stupid system data. There was no fluff to remove from my phone except system data, which was about 12 GB from GarageBand activity. So, what kinds of solutions can I think of?

My first solution was to turn off my iPhone entirely and attempt to restart it. I’ve done this for quite a while; rebooting my iPhone wasn’t perfect. So, I turned off my phone entirely and waited for a minute. I didn’t remember what I did for a minute, except my phone was off. After a minute, I turned on my phone, only to realise that the system data was still intact. It was the first time that one of the solutions I’ve used to minimise storage didn’t work. On the bright side, the system data did decrease just enough for the video to export correctly. However, I cannot ingest the footage onto the computer.

I became desperate and didn’t know what to do. I had to export the video, but I need more space. Sure, I can reboot the phone, and I’ve tried that immediately after it. The iPhone has the system data intact, with no change. I went online to find solutions to reduce the system data. There, I found the worst-case scenario. I must delete everything off my phone and start over.

Before I deleted everything from my phone, I plugged the phone into my computer to back up the data on iTunes. I didn’t remember what I used to back up everything from my iPhone, but the desktop housed my phone’s backup data. However, there was an issue with my iTunes that told me something. It said there was an issue while backing up the files from the iPhone to the computer. It meant that backing up the files may not even be successful. From then on, I had second thoughts about how to save the footage and recover the data. But it didn’t matter; I thought this process was the only right thing to do.

I cleaned everything off my phone and started the new phone process. I plugged my phone into my computer and attempted to restore the backup to the phone. The backup from iTunes didn’t get through, so I decided to start all over.

Meanwhile, all the other things I didn’t take into consideration disappeared. One of those things was the saved contracts. When I cleared everything off my iPhone, the only contracts reserved were my family contracts. All my friends’ contracts were gone. By this point, it was nighttime, and most of my friends were sleeping. So, I might as well be sleeping.

The next day, I went to school. I didn’t go to school because it was around 2021, and there was still COVID school. At my high school, there was this option to go to school and practice social distancing. I didn’t opt for that because of safety reasons. When I went to class, I typed into the chat, asking permission to join my contracts. I think that I’ve requested some of them in some classes due to having some friends more prominent in some classes.

For a jazz band, I’ve tried emailing one friend for a phone number, and it worked well. But regarding my World History class, I asked some friends for their phone numbers. My World History teacher wasn’t quite fond of it and asked me to stop requesting phone numbers in the chat. To the teacher, I asked for the phone numbers in front of everyone, a vast privacy hazard, even though I had no intention of penetrating others’ privacies. I’ve done worse things that did hurt some teachers’ feelings. Quite honestly, the fact that I sent requests for phone numbers in classes made my day.

After those two days, I went on as usual. I regained much of my contracts and forgot several people. I made new videos that made my old ones obsolete. I managed to get better luck with the cleaning of storage, where I rebooted my phone.

When I was in my AP US History class, one classmate asked me about the whole incident. I provided an explanation which was the story you’ve been reading. And that classmate found it quite amusing and exciting. It became a running joke as time passed, and I was cool with it. It didn’t come too often, as I didn’t intentionally become trendy in school. Looking back at it, it was a somewhat unorthodox way of getting your name out for getting into networks.

Regarding wiping everything off my phone, resetting my phone storage and making some space was necessary. I won’t erase my data for a long time, but I may reboot my phone occasionally to fix some problems. Because my country lifted some COVID restrictions, I won’t email classmates for phone numbers. That activity seemed super sketchy and could be a more significant issue as I attend university. But I’m glad that this incident happens, despite the sketchiness.