How to Efficiently Manage Design Apps and Files on Your iPhone

We’re all used to managing project files and software on a Mac, but what about an iPhone? How do you keep work-related design files organized without letting them get lost in the mix with everyday stuff? It’s easier than you think.

In this article, I’ll show you methods for managing your project files and apps on your iPhone so everything’s right where you need it. That way, you can spend your time actually working on your project, not digging around for missing components or tools.

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How to Manage Design Apps on an iPhone

Organizing design apps to create an effective workflow often requires some attempts and errors. Thus, apps for aesthetic home screen redesign may improve appearance but tend to fall short in navigation. Similarly, spreading apps across multiple pages can also make them harder to locate.

A more practical and simpler solution involves grouping apps into folders based on their function. For example, one folder can house core tools such as Figma and Canva. Another can include apps used to find and save fonts for future projects. A third folder might collect sources for inspiration, such as podcasts, Pinterest, and similar resources. It’s not fancy, but it works.

Press and hold any app icon until it starts to wiggle.
Drag it on top of another related app; this will automatically create a folder.
Give the folder a name that matches the type of apps inside.
Do the same for each category you want to organize.
Once you’re done, arrange the folders on your home screen in whatever order makes the most sense for how you use them.

While you’re organizing your apps, you’ll probably come across a few you don’t use anymore, maybe you found better alternatives or just stopped needing them. If that’s the case, you should delete them. It’ll free up space and make your home screen a lot cleaner.

Tap and hold the app icon you want to delete.
Tap Remove App from the options that appear.
Then select Delete App to uninstall it completely. This gets rid of the app and all its data from your iPhone.

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How to Organize Project Files on Your iPhone

Once you’ve sorted all your design apps, that’s just half of the puzzle. You still need to deal with the actual files – your finished projects, drafts, and all the extra items on your iPhone.

This part’s a little trickier since files can be stored in different places depending on your iPhone settings, app settings, and file types. You’re mainly dealing with the Photos app and the Files app.

Most of the effort will concentrate on organizing content in the Photos app. However, since many graphic and web designers work with different setups, several ways to organize content in the Files app will also be discussed. The goal was to make this article helpful for as many designers as possible, whether you are experienced professionals or just starting and need a little support to avoid early burnout.

1. Perform Photo Management in the Photos App

From personal experience, using a single iPhone for work and everyday life isn’t the best move. In the Photos app, everything was mixed together – shots of your morning coffee right next to poster mockup previews. Whenever possible, it’s best to separate personal and professional material from the start. Use a second device for work, maybe another iPhone or iPad, or just stick to your laptop. It’ll save you time and keep your workflow way more organized.

If your gallery’s already a mess, it’s time to clean it up. It would’ve been better to stay on top of it earlier, but better late than never. You should remove unnecessary content before you organize photos. It makes it way easier to sort through what’s left.

As a designer, you’ve probably got a ton of projects to wrap up, so there’s no way you want to waste hours manually deleting photos. Luckily, there’s an easier solution. You can use an app to clean the iPhone photos library. In this article, we recommend Clever Cleaner: AI CleanUp App. Honestly, it proved to be a reliable option.

The Similars feature quickly deletes duplicates and look-alike photos in just a few minutes. Heavies finds and deletes the largest videos and photos that occupy space. It would’ve taken forever if you’d tried to do all that manually. Plus, the app’s totally free – no hidden charges, no annoying ads.

Below is a walkthrough of how to use the Similars feature. If you want to try out the other features later, they work pretty much the same way and are super easy to use.

Download the free Clever Cleaner app from the App Store on your iPhone.
Open the app and give it full access to your Photos. It’ll scan your photo and video library and automatically open the Similars feature.
The app will show you sets of photos – both exact duplicates and ones that look alike. It automatically picks the best photo in each group and marks the rest for deletion.

4. If you agree with the app’s suggestions, just tap Smart Cleanup to delete the extras.

5. If you want to keep something the app marked, you can change the selection manually. Tap the group, uncheck what you want to keep, check what you want to delete, then hit Move to Trash.

6. Your selected photos will go to the app’s trash first. You can double-check everything there and restore anything if needed. When you’re ready, slide the Slide to Delete bar to empty the trash. The deleted photos will then move to your Photos app’s Recently Deleted album.

7. The app will give you instructions on how to free it up, but if you don’t care about freeing up your iPhone’s storage, you may not follow them. After 30 days, this album will be automatically cleared.

Now that you’ve cleared out hundreds (maybe even thousands) of extra photos, it’s a great time to organize the ones you need. While the iPhone automatically sorts items into categories, such as videos or screenshots, creating custom albums often proves more beneficial. You can create custom albums based on project types – such as logos, posters, mockups, or website pages. This way often proves more effective than depending solely on automatic categories, as you can arrange these albums to make the most sense for you and your workflow.

Open the Photos app on your iPhone.
Go to the Albums tab, tap the Create button in the top right corner, and choose New Album.
Give your album a name.
Then, browse your library and pick the photos or videos you want to include.
Once you’ve made your selections, tap Add, then tap Create to finish it up.

You can keep things even more organized by grouping albums into folders, like by year, for example. The process is almost the same, but in the first step, choose New Folder instead of New Album.

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2. Master the Files App for Project Management

When it comes to the Files app, organizing your project files works kind of like it does in the Photos app – you keep what you need and get rid of what you don’t. But the steps (and the order you do them) are a bit different. Here’s how to handle it:

Open the Files app on your iPhone.
Go to the location where you want to create a folder, like iCloud Drive or On My iPhone.
Tap the More icon (the three dots in a circle) in the top right corner.
Choose New Folder from the menu.
Give the folder a name based on your project or file type, then tap Done.

6. To move files into the folder, tap Select in the top right corner, then choose the files you want.

7. Tap Move at the bottom of the screen, and pick your new folder as the destination.

After organizing everything into folders, similar to the structure used in the Photos app, sorting by type like logos, posters, and so on, you can apply an extra trick to make things even easier. In the Files app, you can assign color tags to individual files. For instance, green for completed projects, red for canceled ones, yellow for projects with pending changes, and purple for files with fonts to consider for future use.

Navigate to the file you want to tag in the Files app.
Press and hold on to the file until the options menu appears.
Tap ‘Tags…’ from the context menu.
Choose a color for the tag or create a new tag by typing a name and selecting a color.
Tap ‘Done’ to apply the tag to the file.

While tagging files, it also made sense to clear out storage and delete items that no longer served a purpose:

Swipe left on the file you want to delete.
Tap the red ‘Delete’ button that appears.
Confirm the deletion to remove the file from your device.

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Conclusion

These simple steps help organize design apps and files on an iPhone to make it much easier to locate what’s needed.

Once folders and albums are in place, maintaining order becomes key. New photos should go into the appropriate album or folder immediately, and files in the Files app should receive tags as soon as they’re saved. This habit prevents disorganization from building up and eliminates the need to redo the setup later.