Is iOS eating storage for no reason?

[DCIFRTHS]

After upgrading to iOS 10, I had about 7 GB of free space. Two nights ago, I noticed that I was down to ZERO storage space when I connected my 5S 32 GB model to iTunes. I checked the phone, and it showed less than one GB. I deleted the logs by syncing to iTunes, and deleted MANY applications. I aslo turned on the option to compress iPhotos on the phone. I'm up to about eight GB of storage space now.

Is anyone else noticing that iOS 10 is eating storage space for no apparent reason?

 

[Freakonomics101]

I would do a restore via iTunes if you can't find out why your storage is gone.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

I would do a restore via iTunes if you can't find out why your storage is gone.

Restore as a new device? Not sure I want to go that route... Unless it's an absolute last resort.

I did the update to iOS 10 using iTunes as I'm not a fan of Delta upgrades.

 

[Mlrollin91]

Do you use Apple Music? Apple Music caches in the background until that storage is needed. Try downloading battery doctor and running the junk cleaner. Also, a simple restart could bring back memory if its being used as cache.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Do you use Apple Music? Apple Music caches in the background until that storage is needed. Try downloading battery doctor and running the junk cleaner. Also, a simple restart could bring back memory if its being used as cache.

I don't subscribe to Apple Music. I'll look into battery doctor, and I definitely restarted more times than I care to admit

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Mlrollin91]

I don't subscribe to Apple Music. I'll look into battery doctor, and I definitely restarted more times than I care to admit

Thanks for the suggestions!

You can also try PhoneClean on your Mac, if you have one. This will remove diagnostic files. Those can eat up a lot of space. I recovered over 5GB after updating from iOS 10 beta -> GM then running PhoneClean.

 

[mabok]

Have you look into "Manage Storage" under Settings?
Which of your apps is using a lot of storage?

What about WhatsApp, Telegram, etc?

 

[DCIFRTHS]

You can also try PhoneClean on your Mac, if you have one. This will remove diagnostic files. Those can eat up a lot of space. I recovered over 5GB after updating from iOS 10 beta -> GM then running PhoneClean.

I will look into this one too. Thanks!
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Have you look into "Manage Storage" under Settings?
Which of your apps is using a lot of storage?

What about WhatsApp, Telegram, etc?

Yes. This is actually where I went to delete apps to free up the space.

 

[pdouglas]

After upgrading to iOS 10, I had about 7 GB of free space. Two nights ago, I noticed that I was down to ZERO storage space when I connected my 5S 32 GB model to iTunes. I checked the phone, and it showed less than one GB. I deleted the logs by syncing to iTunes, and deleted MANY applications. I aslo turned on the option to compress iPhotos on the phone. I'm up to about eight GB of storage space now.

Is anyone else noticing that iOS 10 is eating storage space for no apparent reason?

Absolutely. No change but an APPLE update and it eats up more than the amount of the update (I always assumed it would be less since it would delete the old). Visited Genius bar - no explanation.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Absolutely. No change but an APPLE update and it eats up more than the amount of the update (I always assumed it would be less since it would delete the old). Visited Genius bar - no explanation.

I am still having the same problem. I have resorted to deleting apps...

 

[Shirasaki]

For me situation is more manageable as I don't see iOS eating up spaces without notice.
I have lots of lossless music and photos stored on device though.

 

[pdouglas]

I am still having the same problem. I have resorted to deleting apps...

I found from my Genius Bar visit, that the line you get from looking at “Storage” in "about this mac" is wrong (in my OS 10.5.5) The blue line for “Other” that I thought was for things not already identified elsewhere - meaning mostly apps - actually includes Movies, Photos, iTunes, etc. For example for “Movies” i had about 20GB (yellow) but there was another 40GB of Movies included in “Other”. Also found out I had a duplicate of my Photos which was included in Other (20GB). Since Apple updated the application from iPhoto to Photos - it just copied over the files so each app had its own data. Still I just applied an update of 1 GB , but other other inreased by 4 GB. I checked to see if something was put in trash - but that didn’t help. Seems to me they have a way of eating up storage with their updates that they are not fixing. BUt then it probably sells more hardware when the average joe has no room left to add files or update. I usually don’t like to go to the Genius Bar but in this case - this is a mess they created and they should fix. They have tools to find out what is “Other” that we don’t have.

 

[MoonageDaydream]

A trick I learned from somewhere else is to try and RENT a movie from iTunes that has file size bigger than your free space. When you try to rent it it starts cleaning apps and freeing up space. And you don't get charged for the rental, a message pops up that says not enough space to download movie. Sometimes I free up over a gig of space by doing this trick.

 

[mpavilion]

A trick I learned from somewhere else is to try and RENT a movie from iTunes that has file size bigger than your free space. When you try to rent it it starts cleaning apps and freeing up space. And you don't get charged for the rental, a message pops up that says not enough space to download movie. Sometimes I free up over a gig of space by doing this trick.

Just tried this, and freed up a gig, like you said! (Didn't know if it would work; was prepared to watch "Star Trek Beyond" for 99 cents if it actually downloaded...)

Thanks! (Crazy that iOS doesn't have a utility or something to do this...)

 

[MoonageDaydream]

Just tried this, and freed up a gig, like you said! (Didn't know if it would work; was prepared to watch "Star Trek Beyond" for 99 cents if it actually downloaded...)

Thanks! (Crazy that iOS doesn't have a utility or something to do this...)

Funny you picked Star Trek Beyond. I used the same movie to free up some space yesterday. The only downside is you have to keep doing it over time because the space you free up gets used again.

 

[sbailey4]

Look in iMessage as well. Any pictures and attachments will cause that to grow and grow. Can set it to delete after x days to try and let it auto manage. Or you can remove just the pics/attachments from each message thread if you want more control and want to keep the text in the message.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Thanks for all the tips! Going to give them a shot.

 

[steve62388]

I encountered a similar problem recently and I'm pretty sure I know what caused it, just not how to fix it. iOS 10.12.1.

I tried to download an app recently and my 128Gb iPad complained it was out of space. I knew this shouldn't be the case, I was supposed to have about 50Gb free. Looking at the overall storage on my iPad it was showing it was full, but adding up the reported space used by the individual apps it was pretty much equal to about 80Gb. Connecting to iTunes showed 50Gb free space, so there didn't appear to be any way I could fix this. I had been watching a lot of streaming videos on my iPad from the iTunes store recently, I'm almost positive the cache on my iPad screwed up and it wasn't clearing itself.

In the end the only way I could figure out how to fix it was a complete erase and restore off backup.