How to Get your iPhone or iPad Ready for iOS 10

Apple will release iOS 10 on September 13, which means that you have a few days to get your hardware ready for the big upgrade. Here's what you need to do to make sure that things go smoothly for you. Before you do anything major such as upgrading your device you need to make sure that you have a backup just in case things don't go smoothly. You can either back up your data to iCloud, or if you don't have enough space you can take the old-school road and connect your iPhone or iPad to a PC and do the backup through iTunes.

Spring clean your device

Chances are good that your iPhone or iPad has accumulated a lot of detritus over the months and years, so what better time to get rid of it than now. While iOS 10 doesn't need as much free space to install as earlier releases, getting rid of apps that you no longer use - or perhaps have never used - makes good sense.

Do I need to delete apps to make space for the upgrade?

Not if you are on iOS 9 or above, because the operating system will handle clearing space for you (even if that means deleting and redownloading apps).

If you are on an earlier version, and you're cramped on space, then you might need to clear space by deleting apps (be careful because you will lose any associated data), deleting audio or video content (music, downloaded videos, audio books, etc), or moving data such as photos to the cloud (keep reading for more information).