Phone tips: How to speed up your lagging smartphone

If you’ve never bothered to organise the apps on your phone, remove old files or wrangle your notifications into a sensible order, that disorder can make your phone an overwhelming, slow and buggy device. You can fix this and give your phone new life. Decluttering takes just a few minutes.

Delete apps you don’t use

Ever downloaded an app for a single purpose, such as a conference, work meeting or vacation, and then left that app on your phone to digitally rot away on the home screen? The fastest, easiest way to declutter your phone is to get rid of apps you don’t need, and both Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android provide simple ways to figure out which apps you don’t use.

The easiest way to find those neglected apps is to look at all of your apps in a list, organised by the ones you use least often. On an iPhone, head to Settings, General, iPhone Storage. On Android, open the Play Store, tap the hamburger menu in the top-left corner, tap My Apps & Games, Installed, Alphabetical and change it to Last Used. Delete apps that are listed as Never Used or that you haven’t opened in months.