iOS 15.4 Update - Storage Gone

[Digital_Guy]

Any idea what would cause this? Maybe the costliest update I’ve ever performed. Update itself was only about 6.75 GB. Update used ~9GB.

Not sure how many more updates I'll be able to afford? Shame, device is only 2 years old. 🙁

 

[Digital_Guy]

Strange. I’ve been trying to delete items to regain space, but instead, over about the last hour or so, I continue to lose storage, approx. 2 GB more since original post. That’s approx. 11 GB gone since performing the update. What’s going on? Should I be concerned? Help ..

 

[Samdh90]

If you go to the following;

Settings->General->Iphone storage

Then advise what the System Data is using. I am using 11.41GB on an iphone 12 Pro on iOS 15.4

 

[ghostface147]

If you go to the following;

Settings->General->Iphone storage

Then advise what the System Data is using. I am using 11.41GB on an iphone 12 Pro on iOS 15.4

On my 12 Pro it says 9.27 GB for iOS and 10.68 GB for System Data.

 

[Ifti]

My iPhone 13 Pro Max running iOS 15.4 says 9.18GB on iOS and 9.63GB on System Data......

 

[Isamilis]

Try backup -> erase all content and settings -> restore. I read many people solve this storage issues by doing this.

 

[timeislove]

Strange. I’ve been trying to delete items to regain space, but instead, over about the last hour or so, I continue to lose storage, approx. 2 GB more since original post. That’s approx. 11 GB gone since performing the update. What’s going on? Should I be concerned? Help ..

Check “system data” under iPhone storage. Mine goes up from 6-7G to 13-15G, though the download size was only around 1G for my SE2.

Horrible storage management

 

[one more]

If you go to the following;

Settings->General->Iphone storage

Then advise what the System Data is using. I am using 11.41GB on an iphone 12 Pro on iOS 15.4

iPhone 12 mini here:

iOS - 8,62 GB
System Data - 14,79 GB

 

[doboy]

Let it settle down for a day or two before doing anything drastic. It may be rearranging files or cleaning up the filesystem in the background.

 

[BugeyeSTI]

My system data is 6.21gb... iPhone X 15.4

 

[Numero7]

This morning I updated my 13 Pro Max to iOS 15.4 and I noticed that I have more or less 4 GB less of available space…is it normal?

 

[SpecMode]

"System Data" is a catch-all for pretty much any storage space used by the system that isn't associated with a specific app, including software update caches, Spotlight/Siri indexing caches, system event/crash logs, and so on. Because the OS needs to update/regenerate caches after updates, it's normal to see this fluctuate wildly for at least the first day or so after updating, as well as at pretty much any other time you're paying close attention to it (because there is virtually always some kind of system maintenance running in the background that requires some amount of storage space).

 

[BugeyeSTI]

This morning I updated my 13 Pro Max to iOS 15.4 and I noticed that I have more or less 4 GB less of available space…is it normal?

Is system data showing abnormally high numbers?

 

[NoBoMac]

Check “system data” under iPhone storage. Mine goes up from 6-7G to 13-15G, though the download size was only around 1G for my SE2.

Horrible storage management

Not picking on this member, has same phone as I...

What is everyone running on their phone?!?! I'm seeing 8.18GB for OS, 3GB for system data. Installed full update (5.7-ish GB).

Guessing lots of games, social media and messaging apps eating space up (which I have zero of these on my phone).

 

[Danfango]

Uninstall Instagram. Oooh 10 gig back. Attention deficit fixed. Two wins!

 

[evertjr]

I noticed this as a well, I lost about 10gb of space after the update

 

[timeislove]

Not picking on this member, has same phone as I...

What is everyone running on their phone?!?! I'm seeing 8.18GB for OS, 3GB for system data. Installed full update (5.7-ish GB).

Guessing lots of games, social media and messaging apps eating space up (which I have zero of these on my phone).

Hello, 3G of system data is very small per my experience. what was your usual range of system data before the upgrade? If I understand correctly, you are using SE2.

On contrast to what you guess, I never play games, no social media apps installed (e.g. OG, FB, TW, I used safari to visit these social media web only once a while). The usual range of system data was around 7-8G before upgrade.

Tried to remove the downloaded language, clean the web browsing and cache of a few apps. The system data size is shown around 12.5G just now.

 

[NoBoMac]

It's pretty much 3GB all the time. Phone's total storage usage never gets over 32GB. Any bumps can be attributed to podcasts I've downloaded, maybe a few pictures taken before pulling them off to the Mac. Rarely load any new apps.

Almost never use map apps, so might be seeing some savings via not having map info/images caching.

System went down a couple 100MB since I first posted.

ADD: additional 300MB freed since above (~2.25 hours).

 

[Taz Mangus]

On my 13 Pro Max iOS 15.4, 9.18 GB OS, ~2 to 3 GB System Data.

 

[TonyC28]

System data still seems like a/the culprit for me. It’s been hovering around 20 GB for me lately. As I just looked at it right now it went from 19GB to 0.

 

[AlixSPQR]

With iOS 15 I also ”lost” a lot of storage. Perhaps it is necessary, perhaps not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[timeislove]

Let it settle down for a day or two before doing anything drastic. It may be rearranging files or cleaning up the filesystem in the background.

Hello, I think you are right. The system data has been dropped from 13-15G to 9-10G one day after the upgrade.

However, the bug of not able to remove Notes and Reminder (both App and Data) in IOS15 still persists. attached the screenshot showing the app icons (a cloud sign too). The most disturbing is the data storage could not be reclaimed and kept growing.

Also seeing dummy app (apple and google) that occupied storage (first seen in ios15.4) but could not be removed.

 

[Elf7]

Same thing here, 12mini, iOS takes 8.1 GB, and system data went from around 6GB to almost 12GB!
This is all happening in the spirit of iOS updates. It seems that Apple is working hard on downgrades evey time.

 

[Elf7]

"System Data" is a catch-all for pretty much any storage space used by the system that isn't associated with a specific app, including software update caches, Spotlight/Siri indexing caches, system event/crash logs, and so on. Because the OS needs to update/regenerate caches after updates, it's normal to see this fluctuate wildly for at least the first day or so after updating, as well as at pretty much any other time you're paying close attention to it (because there is virtually always some kind of system maintenance running in the background that requires some amount of storage space).

System data always fluctuates, but 100% increase is pretty weird.

 

[jimlat]

iPad 11" pro M1 1TB...iPadOS 7.93GB, system data under 5MB...total 114.7MB used
iPhone 13pro 256GB...iOS 9.14GB, system data under 5MB...total 111.6GB used

As was said, it fluctuates. Powering device off once every week to two weeks, then powering back on may help in the long term in cleaning out temp files, caches and other cruft. YMMV