Anyone who has owned a PlayStation 4 for a while can tell you that the console’s 500GB to 1TB hard drive doesn’t provide nearly as much storage as you might expect. While smaller indie titles often take up a few gigabytes, sprawling AAA games can demand more than 50GB of precious hard drive capacity. Unless you buy an external hard drive, you will probably have to delete old games from time to time to make room for new ones.
Don’t worry, though, you can always go back and reinstall deleted games, either from a disc or the PlayStation Network store, without losing any save progress (deleting games only removes the application itself from the hard drive). Here’s how to delete and reinstall PS4 games.
Deleting games in your library
Step 1: Navigate to the icon for the game you wish to delete, either in the quick start main menu or in your library, which is found all the way to the right side of the utility bar on the PS4 home screen.
Step 2: While highlighting the icon, press the “options” button on your controller to bring up this menu.
Step 3: Scroll down to “Delete,” and confirm your selection by pressing “OK.”
Deleting a game from system storage
If you’re clearing out space, you may want to delete games from the system storage menu itself. The storage menu lists games in size order, making it easier to identify which games are taking up the most space.
Step 1: Navigate to “Settings” on the home screen.
Step 2: Select “Storage.”
Step 3: Select “System Storage,” or “Extended Storage,” if you have an external hard drive attached to your PS4.
Step 4: Select “Applications.”
Step 5: Press options on your controller, choose “Delete.”
Step 6: You can select as many games as you want to delete at this time.
Step 7: With the desired boxes checked, choose “Delete.”
Step 8: Confirm your selections by pressing “OK.”
Reinstalling games
Step 1: Navigate to the library on the home screen and scroll down to “Purchased.” If you are looking for a specific PlayStation Plus game, you ca find them all by selecting the yellow plus symbol located underneath the “Purchased” icon.
Step 2: Games not currently on your hard drive that can be re-downloaded will have a downward arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of their icons.
Step 3: Press “X” on the game you would like to reinstall and click “Download.”
Deleting and reinstalling disc-based games
You can follow almost the exact same process to delete and reinstall physical PS4 games. When the PS4 detects a game disc, the data will automatically begin installing: Make sure to remove your game disc from the console before deleting that game. Then, when you want to play it again, simply put the disc back in to reinstall it.
