Clear your iPhone’s memory

It’s common for the iPhone to periodically slow down and stutter, and you may have noticed your device occasionally behaving sluggishly, particularly when trying to flick between or open apps, or when performing tasks using intensive apps. Sometimes, your iPhone may freeze altogether. Obviously, on older phones this is more common, as their hardware is less well placed to handle more modern software and applications. Very often, what can be causing the freezing or slow-down is that your phone’s Random Access Memory (RAM) has become full. So what do you do if your iPhone is operating slowly and you think memory is the issue?

How to clear RAM on iPhone

Firstly, if you’re using an iPhone without a physical Home button, you’ll need to enable Assistive Touch (you’ll see why later). If your phone does have a physical button, don’t worry about this step.

A Go to Settings, then tap Accessibility. Select Touch and then tap AssistiveTouch. Switch AssistiveTouch on. You’ll now see a circular button on screen. Tap this button to see a menu of touch options. The one we’ll need later is the Home button. Next, enter the shutdown menu, but not the normal one…

Unlock your phone. Next, B in quick succession, press the Volume Up button, then press the Volume Down button, then hold the Lock button until a shutdown menu appears. You’ll now be on the troubleshooting shutdown menu which is used for force restarting, recovery and DFU modes and RAM clearance.

This more powerful C troubleshooting menu does not show the SOS slider. While you’re in this menu, tap the AssistiveTouch button on screen to bring up that menu. Next, press and hold the Home option. If you’re on an iPhone with a physical button, simply hold that down.

You’ll now be presented D with a lock screen, signalling you’ve done it right and to test it’s worked, swipe up and hold in the centre of the screen to open your app tray. Each app you’ve had open will restart when tapped, which is how you know your system memory has been cleared.