PlayStation 5 Gamers Can Free Up Storage Space Without Deleting Any Games

PlayStation 5 users now have the ability to free up a ton of storage space on their consoles without having to delete any games. While the PlayStation 4 offered an easy way to expand its available storage via external hard drives, things are a little more complicated this generation; only certain drives are compatible with the console, and you can’t play games from an external drive — just store them.

So PS5 storage runs out fast, games just keep getting bigger, and deleting games to make room for new ones becomes a frequent ritual. Maybe you’re making room for all 200+ GB of GTA 6, or this month’s PS Plus games — regardless, you need to make room on your PS5, and you don’t want to delete any games.

Now, according to Gaming Bible, there’s a way to free up tons of space on your PS5 without having to delete a single game. Here’s what you have to do:

• From the PS5 home screen, open the Settings menu (the gear-shaped icon in the top right).
• Scroll down and select Storage, then Console Storage.
• Here, you’ll see a breakdown of the available storage space on your PS5. Scroll down and select Games and Apps.
• Scroll through the list of your installed games until you see one with an additional Customize option to the right of the title — this looks like a pencil with three horizontal lines.
• Choose that option, and you’ll be taken to a pop-up menu that shows you all the downloadable content you have for the selected game.
• You may now delete these individually to free up space while keeping the game installed.

A few caveats here: first, not every game will include a Customize option. Naturally, you have to have DLC for the game installed to use it.

In addition, you’ll want to be careful not to delete anything that could mess with your ability to play the game. Cosmetic items should be fine, depending on how your chosen game handles cosmetics, but you might have to reinstall huge story DLC before loading your save file, so be mindful of what you’re getting rid of.

Finally, a lot of video game DLC is too small to make a difference in your hard drive space when deleted individually. From the screenshot above, you can see that each piece of content for Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced takes up only a megabyte or two; I’d have to delete thousands like these to make a meaningful difference.

That said, there is bigger DLC out there; certain games in the notoriously storage-demanding Call of Duty series, for example, released with all their various game modes bundled in as DLC, so players wouldn’t have to install the whole campaign if they just wanted to play Warzone, for example. These individual pieces of DLC are closer to 30–40 GB, so just by deleting a handful of those, you could free up more than 100 GB.

If you’re looking to free up even more space, consider checking your Captures folder; by default, your PS5 saves a screenshot and a 15-second video whenever you get a Trophy. These can add up to occupy a ton of space.

And, if you’re playing an RPG that includes story DLC you haven’t started yet, you might be able to delete that, then reinstall it when it’s time to move on to the next chapter. What works and what doesn’t will vary greatly by the games you have installed on your PlayStation 5, but it’s worth a shot.