The world is becoming increasingly digital. With more of our lives moving online, it’s easy to accumulate a lot of digital clutter. From old emails to unused apps, our digital life can quickly become cluttered and hard to manage. That’s why it’s essential to declutter your digital life occasionally. A digital clearout can help you feel more organized, give you more control over your online life, and even improve your device’s performance. So, if you’re ready to take control of your digital life, here’s a guide on how to have a digital clearout.
Delete Any Apps You Don’t Use Or Haven’t Opened in the Past 6 Months At All
Before you declutter your digital life, getting rid of any apps you don’t use or haven’t opened in the past six months is a good idea. This will leave more space for the apps you need and make your devices run more smoothly. For example, if you have a health app that you only use once a year, there’s no need for it to sit on your device. Over 60% of apps on people’s phones are unused or have only been opened once. If that sounds familiar, delete them and get them off your phone. A quick way to declutter your apps is to use a digital decluttering app. These apps will help you quickly identify the apps you don’t use and remove them from your device in one click.
Tackle Your Inbox
While keeping your inbox clear is essential, ensuring you don’t delete important emails is important. To avoid accidentally deleting something you need, it’s a good idea to mark emails as necessary. You can also use filters to automatically move emails out of your inbox and into a folder where you’d rather have them. For example, Outlook has a “sweep” feature, meaning when you select an email to delete, you can click a box to delete all emails from the sender. However, before deleting them, it can be worthwhile to unsubscribe first. Then, you won’t have to repeat the process again in a few months as you will have fewer emails.
Unfollow Accounts You Don’t Interact With Or Want to See On Social Media
If you want to declutter your social media account, you can do so by unfollowing accounts that you don’t interact with or don’t want to see on social media. This can help you declutter your account and make it easier for you to find the content you want to see. Spend some time scrolling through your social media accounts and be honest with yourself. Do you want to see content from this person or brand? If the answer is no, delete them (top tip: deleting friends on Facebook can cause issues, so you can use the unfollow option to hide them from your feed without deleting them altogether).
For mass deletion, you can usually find free or paid apps you need to grant permission on your account to go through and delete accounts you no longer wish to see instead of manually.
Clear Out Unwanted Files
It can be worth uploading anything you want to keep to a cloud storage account to free up hard drive space. Downloads, email attachments, pictures, videos, and more can all take up storage space on your devices, so you must go through them regularly to delete anything that is taking up space that you don’t want. You can use your device’s automatic setting to clear files or do it manually via the settings feature on each device (this will be different from brand to brand and device). While doing this, don’t forget to close down your tabs and clear out cookies and trackers from your browsing history; read here to find out how to remove frequently visited on safari if you have Apple devices.
Delete Duplicate Or Poor-Quality Images
Another way to declutter your digital files is to delete any duplicate or poor-quality images. This will declutter your digital files and make it easier for you to find the photos you want to work with. If you have a lot of duplicate images or images that are of low quality, delete them. This will help you declutter your digital files, and make it easier for you to find the photos you want to use.
Audit Permissions On Mobile Apps
If you’ve been using your devices for a while, you’ve granted apps unnecessary permissions. This can leave you vulnerable to cyber-attacks and leave your personal data at risk. You can check for any apps that have been granted unnecessary permissions by going to the settings menu on your device and choosing apps. If you’ve granted apps unnecessary permissions, it’s a good idea to revoke them as soon as possible. This will help you declutter your digital life and protect your data. If you end up using the app again, you can regrant permissions as required; revoking permission isn’t permanent.
Empty Your Recycle Folder
When you delete anything on your pc or mac, it will go into your recycle bin. Items will be held here until you physically decide to delete them permanently. However, the more you put into here, the more space it takes up, and at some point, you need to evaluate whether or not you actually need anything in here and get rid of it.
- In Windows follow this process – Start > Settings > Personalization > Themes > Desktop
- On a Mac, find the trash icon on the dock.
- On your phone, go to the settings or file manager and search for the recycle bin to delete from there.
Remember, this is a permanent feature, so you should be confident you do not need or want anything before clearing it out. Try to do this regularly to avoid a significant build-up of files.
Final Words
Now that you know how to declutter your digital life, it’s time to start. The best way to declutter your digital life is to take it one step at a time. First, you should identify the digital clutter you want to declutter and create a plan for how you want to declutter it. Once you’ve got a plan, there’s no stopping you. With a bit of time, effort, and organization, you can declutter your digital life and leave a more organized digital footprint.
