Is there anything I can do about this extremely vague block of data that’s taking up 30% of my phone’s storage? Mind you, this isn’t the operating system itself, as that’s listed as its own category.
Just as well Apple doesn’t charge a premium for storage space ✊💦💦💦
I find it really annoying too. Unfortunately this has been a thing since the earliest apple devices. Back then it was called “Other” and not much besides the name change has improved. You’d think that apple would add a way to clean it manually but no, probably in the next decade.
With modern devices having a minimum of 128gb it’s not usually a problem in daily usage though. Only when it shoots up to many tens of GB then you can do the date trick.
If you temporarily set the date a few years in the future and wait a bit, the system will try deleting the cache. Just be careful of expiration for SMS chats.
This happened to me and it ended up being the mail app.
That’s mail, downloaded songs, app data that’s not needed for the app to function… was 50 GB Spotify for me
Do you need this space right now? It should free it up automatically if space is tight.
I’ve found it to happen when an app schedules something for deletion, but the OS doesn’t get around to actually completing the deletion operation for one reason or another. A normal restart seems to fix it up for me.
Is your phone out of storage?
This value will fluctuate according to system needs
iOS might wait to purge the cache until it needs the space
Wow I just checked and mine is at 25gb on iPhone 13, so no AI stuff.
This is a very widespread bug that causes any empty space to fill up quickly.
The solution is pretty convoluted (involves changing the phone date), but two main culprits are Instagram and Discord, which use phone cache to store data where the system doesn’t log as app data. Try remove these and check if System Data got smaller.
The better solution is to change phone’s date 1 year into future and wait a while so iOS can be tricked into delete “old cache”. You can google it for full instructions.
Interesting. I don’t have either of those apps but I do have way more than most people I assume. I’ll look into it. Glad I’ve got a 512gb model.
Cold also be to do with the fact that I’ve been transferring data without a clean install since iPhone 4s lol
Actually backing-up and reloading that backup also helps since the backup doesn’t carry any cache or logs. I’ve done it on my SO’s 12 mini just a few hours ago. So you don’t need a clean install still :D
Thanks for the info! I’ll keep it in mind when I can bothered to do something about it.
YMMV, but this problem went away for me when I disabled syncing to my MacBook via WiFi. My guess is that it was caching backup images but never successfully copying and removing them.
Apply the trick of flight mode and forward 1 year in system date
What does that do?
Presumably it instantly causes all logs to expire as they’re now more than 1 year old, so the system deletes them.
When I had the problem on my wife’s phone, the answer ended up being text messages and safari. This was 5 years ago so I don’t know if it changed but despite the apps saying it used x storage under storage, it was actually kept in System.
Metadata, caches, obsolete files and stuff, uncleaned leftovers from miscellaneous apps, out of sync forgotten bytes, and the Ghost in the machine…
The advice I’ve seen is to back up your phone (iCloud or iTunes), factory reset, then restore your backup.
These things get bigger and bigger the older your phone is, because OS updates seem to always leave more and more shit laying around (probably for disaster recovery in case the update goes sideways).
Windows has a command you can run to purge all the old update shit to free up space. I wish Apple would get off their ass and implement the same.
Cable backup to Mac’s the best way for some reason is that right?
iCloud or local Mac backup is the same in terms of data. A local Mac backup is significantly faster.
Local backup saves sensitive data which doesn’t go into iCloud backups. For the most part it doesn’t matter because that data can usually be restored from the keychain and secure enclave, but that takes longer and can still miss some bits you have to enter yourself.
Thought it was something like that ya!
I like the idea of doing a full DFU restore from IPSW when getting a new phone to go full paranoia mode. Haven’t done but… anyway then local restore.
Work computer recently had 400gb of 500 filled with system data stuff. /Tmp doesnt get cleaned except for on reboot.
What lazy scripts are leaving stuff behind in /tmp when they finish with it? It should be cleared out by whatever process put it there.
Xcrun altool
I don’t like the lack of a meaningful explanation. “System Data” might as well be “stuff” and I don’t trust it.
Then again, Apple is known for their toddler-compatible interfaces. Maybe they thought that an actual explanation or breakdown would be too complicated and scary for their average user.
I mean… Caches, logs, and other system data currently in use by the system is a fairly decent explanation. Computers need space to put stuff while it’s working. It’s not particularly odd to not go to extremes labeling the contents of the junk pile that’ll get discarded if anything comes up.
Linux is about as open as a system can be and it has several piles of roughly undocumented junk that can be difficult to know exactly what they contain.
There’s nothing about it to “not trust”. If it wanted to hide something from you it wouldn’t tell you it was there and refuse to explain fully, it would just not tell you at all. It’s not like you can check it’s work.
Do a factory reset. Mine got up to 30GB. I did a factory reset and now it’s at 8GB
This 100%. Friend had theirs get to some 50+ Gb. After backing it up to iTunes, resetting the phone, then restoring to the backup, it all cleared up. My guys is it’s some sort of bug, (or collection of bugs), that prevents temp files from getting deleted properly. After the restore, all she had to do was reset face id and log into a few apps. All the stuff was still there minus expected stuff like Spotify downloads.
