"Documents & Sync" - 80% of my iPhone Cellular usage!?

[JohnOCFII]

Since my last entry on June 2nd, I've been better about using Low Power Mode and it does seem to help quite a bit. It is a shame to have to resort to that, but it seems to help.

I _have_ also did a total reset on my old iPad, and exchanged it for a new one that I set up from scratch (didn't use an automated migration too). That could be a contributing factor too.

 

[JohnOCFII]

Hi, John!

For the last couple months I've been experiencing the same problem that you did/are on my iPhone 12Pro, and it's causing a first-world "crisis" on my 6GB data plan. Did you ever find a cause or, better, a solution? I just checked with a colleague (and my wife and her son), and everyone else has Documents & Sync as a paltry amount of their overall data usage, whereas it's killing me at 57% of my total data usage.

Now using the DataMan widget to constantly monitor usage, I find a 4% usage in one day with almost nothing running and spending all my time at work and at home on WiFi -- I don't even have any notoriously data-hungry apps on my phone or stream videos, and I'm anti-social media! I do listen to NPR on a local app (WBEZ) during my bike commuting and fitness rides 1-3hr/day, but the WBEZ app usage is currently at 430MB compared to 1.8GB for Docs&Sync.

Any updates on a fix would be appreciated. Otherwise, I'll schedule a Genius appointment and cross my fingers it's not a total waste of time. I don't want to give AT&T more of my $$$ when this was never previously an issue.

Thanks,

Dave

If you get a helpful Genius person, you might point them at this thread. If you look at all the things I (and others) have tried to reduce cellular data consumption, it really seems like something deep in iOS is allowing Apps (main suspect is things using iCloud, but don't know for sure) to bypass any settings that tell the apps not to use Cellular.

Lately, my wife leaves the house more often than I do, and her Documents & Sync percentage of data usage is way, way smaller than mine.

 

[Johnny Gratton]

Hi All , Great to read that I’m not alone? Same problem here Doc&Synch 60% of cell data. I contacted Apple Support this morning and got 2 hrs with them sharing screen with senior tech support guy. They were very supportive and he definitely saw there was an issue. He seems to be aware of the issue and his possible fix was same as yours to sign out from ICloud and restart the phone. I know you all already tried…and it’s mixed results ?I asked him another option in case it’s was not working and if issue coming back. He told me to sing out ICloud again but to let ICloud disconnected at least 24hr.

 

[Johnny Gratton]

For additional info, doc&sync cell data issue is on my IPhone XR iOS 14.6. May be I’m wrong but it seems that older iPhone model seems less affected . My wife have iPhone 7 and docs&synch spend +~150mb/month… My son with Iphone 8 spend +~ 600mb in docs&synch. I have 5 or 6 device on same Apple ID…

 

[JohnOCFII]

I have 6 days left in my current cellular billing month. My phone is at a total of 1.7 GB of cellular data usage. Of that, 1.5 GB is System Services, and of that, while there are some other tiny usage, it shows 1.5 GB of Documents & Sync usage.

From my experience, the particular phone does not make a difference. I had an iPhone 8 where I saw this issue up until I got an iPhone 12 mini when they came out last fall. I reset that phone like new, and now my wife uses it. She has no issues with high Documents & Sync usage.

I've logged out and re-logged in to each of the 5 devices on this iCloud account (1 phone, 1 iPad, 3 Macs). I wiped and sold my older iPad. I set up a new iPad from scratch (but still on the same iCloud account), and all of that without a change in this issue.

 

[JohnOCFII]

I asked him another option in case it’s was not working and if issue coming back. He told me to sing out ICloud again but to let ICloud disconnected at least 24hr.

Well - I haven't tried staying logged out longer than 10 minutes. Who knows - maybe that'll do something. I'd probably want to do that for all the devices on this same iCloud account.

 

[Modernwood]

Really appreciate this whole thread, John. I've been having this issue for just a few months now.
I'll post the requisite details:
Iphone SE, 14.6, and I've got an ipad Pro.

I've got a 16gb family plan on verizion that has almost always been more than enough, especially because we work from home. Last month, we got an alert that there was 10% data remaining. I didn't even notice the text cause I was picking up my kids. Drove them home, listened to a couple songs, and by the time we were home, our data was down to 0%. Verizon wasn't helpful, but I finally figured out it was a super high Documents and sync.

I tried to put on all the breaks, the no cellular usage, etc. Actively monitored stats, etc. For sure D&S was high. I thought it was a one time thing but it just happened again. We ran out, I purchased 1gb to get us by for a few days, wife and I were home working all day, I drove to pick up my kids and suddenly the GB was gone. Checked my usage and D&S was at 2.2 GB, which is insane.

Based on everything you've posted, John, I'm wondering if it isn't maybe related to my iPad. I spent all day taking notes on a notes app (Notability) that I use on my iPad and doing research on my Macbook Air. I then left them house, used my phone a bit for maps and pre-downloaded Podcast, and suddenly the gb was gone. (I specifically had all apps set to background only over Wifi, and had cellular for Podcasts and IG turned off since those are higher users).

So maybe I'm wondering if the apps on the ipad which save themselves to icloud, like my notes app, all synched over cellular at some point?

I just don't know. I'll try the signing out and back in on icloud but I sort of don't know why that would help. And doing the full erase, I mean I will if I have to, but I don't have the time to be trying to totally set myself back up when I use so much of this stuff for work.

Thanks for you detail and diligence. Here's hoping we solve this.

 

[Johnny Gratton]

Well - I haven't tried staying logged out longer than 10 minutes. Who knows - maybe that'll do something. I'd probably want to do that for all the devices on this same iCloud account.

So far just the simple ICloud sign out seems to work fine and fixed the Doc&Synch issue. I signed out all devices on same ID.
After 7 days now my Docs&Synch is only 17mb. It was 2.4Gb last month…?. Total data usage is back to normal. Will let you know if it’s still doing good and until end of this period. Fingers crossed….

 

[JohnOCFII]

End of the (cellular) month update:

Total cellular usage: 2.3 GB
Documents & Sync usage: 1.6 GB
Roughly 70% of my cellular usage is something I have no idea how to control.

 

[JohnOCFII]

So maybe I'm wondering if the apps on the ipad which save themselves to icloud, like my notes app, all synched over cellular at some point?

I think you are closing in on the cause. Something that Apple supposedly controls (like iCloud syncing) is not respecting the cellular flag. I too, take a lot of notes during the day on my iPad. I also take a smaller amount (just text) using Apple's Notes app. My Notes Plus App is only on my iPad, so I would not _think_ that would impact this, but who knows... When I replaced both my phone (last fall) and my iPad (last month) and set them up from scratch (well, other than the iCloud sync) I was really hoping if there was some old rogue app that I wasn't using, that it would go away. Clearly that isn't the case.

I'll look more closely at what is syncing on iCloud, generally, and forget about whether or not I've set it to not use cellular.

 

[Modernwood]

Been on the phone with Apple support now for a couple hours, running diagnostics, the gal is very nice but doesn't really have any insight. Basically the problem, as I think we're all aware, is that it's super hard to pin down what is happening exactly, and what are the correlations. Wifi-assist makes this even harder because if you didn't have that turned off, it's possible that your phone was, I guess, (my term here) "micro dripping" cellular data the whole time. But I don't think that's what's happening. I think I'm leaving my house for like an hour, and something is kicking in, and it's for some reason, somehow, synching a ton of data. And they keep thinking it's icloud Drive, but that sort of doesn't make sense to me. Sure, if it truly is trying to synch all files across devices and store them all locally, then if I had a big file on my Macbook, and it tried to synch to my phone, well that would make sense it would use up the cellular data, but I also don't think that's how it would work, or was designed, because that would be insane. Everyone with a mac and an iphone would constantly be running into issues of their phones trying to download massive amounts of data to keep up with the various desktop files, downloads, documents, whatever. More likely the "synch" happening is more a listing of files and, should you ever actually try to access them on your phone, it then downloads it directly (this is how Photos works, and things like Dropbox and Box, so I can't imagine it doesn't work like that with drive).

So yeah, I guess they'll ship off these diagnostics to the Engineers, but I'm not sure the tests they're running are going to capture much.

 

[FTH]

John: thanks for detailing this problem and summarizing all the internet posts across multiple forums I’ve seen on this issue. Over the last month, my wife and I have been through the same issue as everyone on this thread (note my wife owns an iPhone XR and I own an iPhone 12 Pro Max; we have a couple of macs my wife uses for work, but no iPads. I’m not sure it has mattered for the issue, but wanted to be clear to others as they read). For years, we’ve been totally fine on our AT&T plan data usage, then suddenly last month, our data began to spike from around 4Gigs/month each to 1-2G/day each. And it was all under Documents & Sync. After reading all the advice detailed across multiple blogs, turning off all the toggles to reduce cell usage, it still wasn’t making a significant dent in the daily consumption. Like John, it was incredibly frustrating, especially as it was basically costing $10/day in overages for both our phones. And yes, while I could get an unlimited plan, the frustration of not knowing what was driving this was maddening and I spent far too long reading posts and trying to solve it. Then last Sunday, after a conversation with a friend, he made the suggestion that I go the nuclear option and totally erase and reset my phone and my wife’s too. While he wasn’t sure of the issue after doing the same research all of us have done and comparing to his iPhone settings, he theorized that it could be malware of an app malfunction that was driving the mysterious consumption. So, I went to the internet, followed the instructions to back up my iPhone via iCloud, and started first by totally erasing and restarting my phone (eg the Factory Reset route). With iCloud, it’s surprisingly easy and doesn’t take a ton of time. You have to do some basic steps once your phone comes back (eg had to redownload apps and Amazon music songs to my iPhone), but it was all pretty simple. After confirming my erase and reset went well (eg all my settings came back along with my pics, notes, etc), I then went and did the same for my wife. I did that all on Monday and standing here on Friday, the issue has completely gone away. Documents and Sync data consumption is not an issue for either of us (back to pre-crazy levels) despite the same usage as prior to Monday; honestly, I couldn’t be happier. The reset was totally worth it and while I’m not sure of the root cause, my friend’s theory seems to at least on the right track. While I’m slightly nervous the issue might come back, for now, I’m feeling a complete relief. The black cloud has been lifted! While I’m not sure this step will work for everyone, I thought it was a strong enough case that I needed to post back to this forum and to John after spending hours reading through this blog. Felt like it was time to give back to the support group! I hope that others in this same desperate situation will find success in the “nuclear option” too, inspired by this post. Good luck to you all out there and thanks again John!

 

[Modernwood]

John: thanks for detailing this problem and summarizing all the internet posts across multiple forums I’ve seen on this issue. Over the last month, my wife and I have been through the same issue as everyone on this thread (note my wife owns an iPhone XR and I own an iPhone 12 Pro Max; we have a couple of macs my wife uses for work, but no iPads. I’m not sure it has mattered for the issue, but wanted to be clear to others as they read). For years, we’ve been totally fine on our AT&T plan data usage, then suddenly last month, our data began to spike from around 4Gigs/month each to 1-2G/day each. And it was all under Documents & Sync. After reading all the advice detailed across multiple blogs, turning off all the toggles to reduce cell usage, it still wasn’t making a significant dent in the daily consumption. Like John, it was incredibly frustrating, especially as it was basically costing $10/day in overages for both our phones. And yes, while I could get an unlimited plan, the frustration of not knowing what was driving this was maddening and I spent far too long reading posts and trying to solve it. Then last Sunday, after a conversation with a friend, he made the suggestion that I go the nuclear option and totally erase and reset my phone and my wife’s too. While he wasn’t sure of the issue after doing the same research all of us have done and comparing to his iPhone settings, he theorized that it could be malware of an app malfunction that was driving the mysterious consumption. So, I went to the internet, followed the instructions to back up my iPhone via iCloud, and started first by totally erasing and restarting my phone (eg the Factory Reset route). With iCloud, it’s surprisingly easy and doesn’t take a ton of time. You have to do some basic steps once your phone comes back (eg had to redownload apps and Amazon music songs to my iPhone), but it was all pretty simple. After confirming my erase and reset went well (eg all my settings came back along with my pics, notes, etc), I then went and did the same for my wife. I did that all on Monday and standing here on Friday, the issue has completely gone away. Documents and Sync data consumption is not an issue for either of us (back to pre-crazy levels) despite the same usage as prior to Monday; honestly, I couldn’t be happier. The reset was totally worth it and while I’m not sure of the root cause, my friend’s theory seems to at least on the right track. While I’m slightly nervous the issue might come back, for now, I’m feeling a complete relief. The black cloud has been lifted! While I’m not sure this step will work for everyone, I thought it was a strong enough case that I needed to post back to this forum and to John after spending hours reading through this blog. Felt like it was time to give back to the support group! I hope that others in this same desperate situation will find success in the “nuclear option” too, inspired by this post. Good luck to you all out there and thanks again John!

This is good to hear. Our data plan resets tomorrow. I’m going to watch it like a hawk and if there is any jump in data I’ll try this and do the full reset. Hopefully not.
Fwiw the Apple person I spoke to said it was an issue the engineers were looking into. Who knows what that means.

 

[Currawong]

I just had this wipe out my remaining monthly data and any top-ups I could get on my plan. The only thing I've done differently has been to use Apple Maps rather than Google Maps, as Apple has finally gotten around to adding, albeit weak, traffic data to the city I live in.

I turned iCloud off and on and it killed the excess cellular data usage, but I also turned data off for maps. I turned it back on, and I'll see if that causes it to jump again.

 

[andyeb]

I've been hit by this same issue on an iPhone 11 running iOS 14.5.1.

Common factors I've identified:

- seems to happen on days when I'm out of the house (ie. Not on wifi) and possibly when connected to power. The main use case in question is when I'm using my iPhone for turn-by-turn directions in the car.
- I'm noticing a general battery life hit too. Perhaps it is also happening at home, over the wifi, but I don't notice the extra data consumed? My broadband provider no longer offers bandwidth usage statistics.

As I'm an iOS developer by trade, I'm going to try filing a bug report with Apple and see if we can make some head way with properly diagnosing this.

This must be costing Apple and absolute fortune in wasted bandwidth on their side!

 

[andyeb]

I've managed to make some progress debugging this. Using Charles Proxy I've managed to determine that my device is making repeated calls to the iCloud Key Value service - it had used 500kb in just a few minutes.

Unfortunately I can't see the contents of the requests because as soon as I enable SSL Proxying, to snoop on the contents of the messages, they stop being sent!

 

[uburoibob]

Excellent having this entire thread. I too have recently developed this issue, seemingly out of the blue.

While I tried some of these, I am glad to have read through experiences and saved myself some time, so thank you all.

I've just tried shutting off Apple Maps to see if that will help. I turned iCloud off. Deleted all saved files in iCloud. Reset. Logged out, restarted phone, and logged back in. Etc. Hopefully, Maps is the issue... sigh.

 

[uburoibob]

John: thanks for detailing this problem and summarizing all the internet posts across multiple forums I’ve seen on this issue. Over the last month, my wife and I have been through the same issue as everyone on this thread (note my wife owns an iPhone XR and I own an iPhone 12 Pro Max; we have a couple of macs my wife uses for work, but no iPads. I’m not sure it has mattered for the issue, but wanted to be clear to others as they read). For years, we’ve been totally fine on our AT&T plan data usage, then suddenly last month, our data began to spike from around 4Gigs/month each to 1-2G/day each. And it was all under Documents & Sync. After reading all the advice detailed across multiple blogs, turning off all the toggles to reduce cell usage, it still wasn’t making a significant dent in the daily consumption. Like John, it was incredibly frustrating, especially as it was basically costing $10/day in overages for both our phones. And yes, while I could get an unlimited plan, the frustration of not knowing what was driving this was maddening and I spent far too long reading posts and trying to solve it. Then last Sunday, after a conversation with a friend, he made the suggestion that I go the nuclear option and totally erase and reset my phone and my wife’s too. While he wasn’t sure of the issue after doing the same research all of us have done and comparing to his iPhone settings, he theorized that it could be malware of an app malfunction that was driving the mysterious consumption. So, I went to the internet, followed the instructions to back up my iPhone via iCloud, and started first by totally erasing and restarting my phone (eg the Factory Reset route). With iCloud, it’s surprisingly easy and doesn’t take a ton of time. You have to do some basic steps once your phone comes back (eg had to redownload apps and Amazon music songs to my iPhone), but it was all pretty simple. After confirming my erase and reset went well (eg all my settings came back along with my pics, notes, etc), I then went and did the same for my wife. I did that all on Monday and standing here on Friday, the issue has completely gone away. Documents and Sync data consumption is not an issue for either of us (back to pre-crazy levels) despite the same usage as prior to Monday; honestly, I couldn’t be happier. The reset was totally worth it and while I’m not sure of the root cause, my friend’s theory seems to at least on the right track. While I’m slightly nervous the issue might come back, for now, I’m feeling a complete relief. The black cloud has been lifted! While I’m not sure this step will work for everyone, I thought it was a strong enough case that I needed to post back to this forum and to John after spending hours reading through this blog. Felt like it was time to give back to the support group! I hope that others in this same desperate situation will find success in the “nuclear option” too, inspired by this post. Good luck to you all out there and thanks again John!

Is your solution continuing to work well?

 

[luxnova]

So I too have been suffering this issue for more than 8 months now. Finally got a second tier support person at Apple who listened and got my case escalated to the engineers. With long test and logging through system profile send by Apple and lots of screen shot we have arrived at a solution that works for once. The culprit here is iCloud Keychain sync issue that result from a back up and restore, essentially it is going rogue and eating up lots of cellular data. Toggling keychain off and then on does not really solve the issues since there are some other parts of iCloud that is still using the sync function. Back up and restoring the phone does not work because the issue is with the encrypted keys. And setting up the phone as new works well but you loose all of the data and become paranoid of the data usage, not a good option for me. So here's the step for what I did to reset the iCloud Keychain and encryption key completely on an iOS device.

1. Before you do anything backup your phone, doing this to a computer is faster restore than iCloud but each to their own.
2. From here, sign out of iCloud in the setting; when prompt if you want to keep the keychain data, choose keep on phone.
3. Go Face ID & Passcode, enter the code to get in and change the device pass code to something different.
4. Sign back into iCloud again; this is where things get interesting
5. If you have 2FA authenticate the sign in, this is fine.
6. It will now ask you to very the passcode from another device, this is where you would tap on forget passcode and then keep insisting through out all of the other similar prompt that you forgot the passcode on the other devices, even if you know it. Don't enter it in, this is part of the keychain reset process.
7. Once you are done with this process, iCloud should ask you to either update Apple ID setting. Or if it does not then check if keychain it turned off, if it is toggle it on.
8. It will ask you for an old passcode, choose later and then it will ask passcode from another device, choose forget again and insist you forgot on every similar prompt even-though you know it.
9. Now it will ask you if you want to enable keychain, choose forget all passcode. Then it will ask you to reset any keychain, tap yes and you should be good to go.

This is a rough process from Apple not an exact 100% step by step, but the main idea is here. I was doing it live with my support rep and this is taken as a note from the rep after the fact. So when I was doing it live I didn't take note, too many screens. In the end I didn't loose any keychain containing password or even wifi password, either on the phone or on any of my iOS or Mac. So this is a good thing. Doing this would reset the encryption key for the keychain on the device. Once I have done this, my document and sync is now down to the Kilobytes and not 100 mb / day or even more, some days got up to a gig.

Hope this help someone who might be having this issue. It may not work for all but I sure did work for me.

 

[uburoibob]

So I too have been suffering this issue for more than 8 months now. Finally got a second tier support person at Apple who listened and got my case escalated to the engineers. With long test and logging through system profile send by Apple and...

Hope this help someone who might be having this issue. It may not work for all but I sure did work for me.

Thanks for this. Any chance you caught the name of the Apple technician you were working with? Some of this seems pretty tough to visualize without doing it. It might be nice to have an Apple contact if things go wrong.

I did a total wipe and start from scratch yesterday. So far, so good.

If it crops back up, I will try this method.

 

[kda96]

So I too have been suffering this issue for more than 8 months now. Finally got a second tier support person at Apple who listened and got my case escalated to the engineers.
...
Hope this help someone who might be having this issue. It may not work for all but I sure did work for me.

Thank you for posting this; it worked for me. I was able to follow the steps for two phones suffering from this issue, and it seems to have addressed the issue. I am pretty tech-saavy, but this was a pretty thorough write-up. A couple of notes: (1) I had to manually toggle icloud keychain back on for both phones after step 6; (2) Note that you may have to wait a few seconds after reseting the keychain (step 9), but the phone will eventually go back to the screen with the keychain switch flipped on when it's done.

 

[JohnOCFII]

Very interesting progress recently -- thanks all for posting! About a week ago I was going to post that I was halfway through my cellular month without issue, but then on Friday, Documents & Sync consumed 352 MB, and on Sunday, another 133 MB.

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but back in November, when I got this iPhone 12 mini to replace my iPhone 8, I set it up from scratch (no restore) and that didn't solve anything. Now I am interested in that progress reported by @luxnova and by @andyeb -- both point to something with iCloud data being the culprit. As a person who's had Macs and other Apple gear since the time of the Macintosh Iici, I could certainly see cruft from years gone by be related to this issue.

Of course - I just noted this in the post from @luxnova "And setting up the phone as new works well but you loose all of the data and become paranoid of the data usage, not a good option for me." Sadly -- while setting up my phone from new seemed OK for a couple of weeks, it eventually went back to eating data. Which makes sense to me if things get re-corrupted. So either Apple needs to fix something on the back-end, or I'd have to some how disable and destroy the iCloud Keychain on all my devices as well as iCloud. And wouldn't THAT be a chore!

 

[Jeni_H]

I've just registered to reply to this! I have a similar problem. I have an iPhone XR with the latest iOS. I have another iPhone 5 which I leave plugged in to my hifi. It's currently uncharged and has been for a while. My massive data usage isn't from Documents & Sync though, it's iTunes Media Services, and Apple Music. I burned through 3gb of data in less than a week last month while out walking and listening to Apple Music. It was probably no longer than 9 hours I had music on. I had all the settings on the lowest quality, and did a comparison with my son's iPhone XR. Mine used 40mb of data for one song, his used 4mb. iCloud only shows me as logged in on the iPhone XR. I've been in touch with Apple, who were less than helpful, wanting me to contact my carrier to raise a ticket with them - because of course GiffGaff can control the iTunes Media Services on my phone and drain my data...
I completely wiped my phone, logged in with my Apple ID but didn't restore. I listened to one song on Apple Music to see how much data it used, as that was my original issue. It was still high, around 20mb. I downloaded the same song. That was 9mb. I did nothing else to the phone except switch off wifi. I reset the statistics, contacted Apple online and during the chat iTunes Media Services used 441mb of mobile data in 45 minutes. I was chatting on my desktop PC, the phone was on the desk at the side of me.

 

[Stormtrooper_Pete]

I too suffer the same issues and spent a good deal reading this and other posts this weekend trying to resolve them. So far, after a couple of days, I seem to have some luck and my "Documents & Sync" has remained stable. Thanks everyone for all you've posted so far, especially to @JohnOCFII for keeping us all updated with his trials.

I did NOT sign out of iCloud or do any reset/reboots, but I did disable iCloud Keychain, I then turned off location services for several apps (or switched them to "Allow while using"), and then the last thing I did was completely delete all downloads for Apple Music - I did not erase my entire library, just removed all songs (go to General > iPhone Storage > Music, then just above and to the right of "all songs" is the EDIT button, press that and then choose "Delete" under all songs). I then simply enabled the "Automatic Downloads" feature from Settings > Music so my playlist songs would download again. Since I've done that, I've not had the issue of cellular usage spiking when out of the house and away from wifi. It could be isolated solely to the location services, but even that is hard to imagine taking up over 1GB of data in a few days.

However, since these changes, usage has been stable at only a few MB and I've been away several hours at a time. I had even used a fitness app to track my location and speed/progress during an outdoor ride and no spike in data usage. Wanted to share for what it's worth, and maybe it might help some of you out. I'm using iPhone Xs running iOS 14.6.

 

[andyeb]

I've now reported this issue to Apple via the developer "Feedback Assistant", number FB9363303.

I included a sysdiagnose report, with iCloud Key Value logging enabled.

I would recommend quoting the above number in any correspondence with Apple.