With Sony preparing to release a lot of great PS5 games over the next few years, you’re going to need all the space you can get. Luckily, we have some tips on how to manage your PS5 storage better, as well as how to increase it if you need more.
How to Check Your PS5’s Storage Space
It’s a good idea to understand how to navigate to your PlayStation 5’s storage settings, so that when you need to manage your space, you can find your way there.
Checking the status of your PS5’s storage is fairly straightforward. When you fire up your console and have logged in to your profile, you’ll find yourself on the Home Screen, where you access all your games and apps. From here, select the Settings option in the top-right of the screen (marked as a little cog), and head to the Storage tab.
Once in the Storage menu, you’ll be provided with a bar which shows a mix of colors. This indicates how much space is taken up by different segments, these being Games & Apps, Media Gallery, and Saved Data. The last segment, Other, is space taken up by the operating system and system data, which means it can’t be deleted or even altered in any way.
Delete Your Unplayed Games and Apps
Commonly, people will download lots of games in one go with no intention of actually playing them at the same time. Having dozens of the many available PS5 games on your storage drive that aren’t being used is just wasted space. It’s best to delete the games that you currently aren’t playing and download them again at a later time.
To do this, from the Storage menu, select the tab Console Storage (which is automatically highlighted when you enter the Storage menu.) From there, click on the tab, Games and Apps, which will bring up a list of games and apps you have currently installed on your device.
If you look to the left, there’s a button with three lines and an arrow. This is the Sort button, which allows you to filter the games and apps in different ways (file size, usage date, etc.).
Once you’ve sorted your list, you can now go through the list and click the box to select the games that you want to delete. When you first select any game, the button in the bottom right, Delete, will switch from transparent to highlighted, indicating that it’s now selectable.
Once you’ve selected the games you want to delete, head over to the Delete button and click it. A pop-up window will ask if you’re sure you want to delete the listed games, as well as how much storage space that the games take up in total. Select OK to confirm deletion.
Physical Games Take Up the Same Storage as Digital
Whether you have a PlayStation 5 Digital or Disc edition, the storage you receive with the console is the exact same—825gb of SSD. But, there’s also no difference in space between the installation of a physical game and a digital game on the PlayStation 5. Regardless of the other pros and cons of each console, storage isn’t one of them.
However, a physical game will install faster than its digital counterpart thanks to the fact it’s copying data mainly off a disc as opposed to downloading the content from a server. Nevertheless, if you only own a PS5 Digital Edition, your storage woes are the same as the Disc Edition.
Use an External Hard Drive
If you’re moving from the last generation consoles to the PS5, it’s safe to assume that you’ll have an external hard drive lying around. These can be used on the PlayStation 5, with a few exceptions.
External hard drives (or solid state drives) need to be above 250GB and below 8TB. Sony also requires that the storage drive is a USB SuperSpeed 5 Gbps or later model. If you currently own a storage drive that ticks both of these boxes, you’re good to go.
There’s also another issue. External USB drives cannot play PlayStation 5 games directly from the drive. You’re free to transfer PS5 games to and from the external drive, but only PS4 games can be played directly from an external storage device. If you have a PS5 Digital Edition or buy most of your games digitally, it may still be quicker than downloading though.
Install a Second Internal Solid State Drive on Your PS5
This last tip is easily the most daunting for many people, especially those who don’t have experience building computers or tinkering with their devices. That being said, installing a second solid state drive in your PlayStation 5 is likely the best solution for the long-term.
Unfortunately, this is a fairly lengthy process to get through, so if you’re interested in installing an SSD into your PS5, you should read our guide on how to add an M.2 SSD to your PS5.
M.2 SSDs can be fairly pricey, especially in the higher storage capacities. So it’s good to make sure you do your research, and read the guide above, so you don’t accidentally ruin your new SSD when installing it onto your PS5.
Now, You Can Get Back to Playing Some Games
Now that you know how to manage your PS5 storage better, and how to increase your storage if you want to add more, you can get back to actually playing the games. Which is, we assume, why you bought a PS5 in the first place. And once you’ve nailed the storage issues, there are plenty of other tips and tricks worth knowing.
