iTunes - Documents and Data

[scouser75]

Hi guys,

When I sync my iPhone on iTunes, i have 13.2GB of Documents and Data. How can I see what documents and data is taking up so much of my space? I have no idea where it's all come from!

I've deleted loads of pictures from my WHatsapp messages. I also have data on my BBC Sport app. But not to the extent of 13GB!

 

[cruisin]

If you go to settings > general > storage & iCloud usage > manage storage it should break down what your apps use.

Some of it might be music/photos/videos and some might be app updates (a 100 MB app in the app store might download 1 GB or more later as you use it).

 

[scouser75]

If you go to settings > general > storage & iCloud usage > manage storage it should break down what your apps use.

Some of it might be music/photos/videos and some might be app updates (a 100 MB app in the app store might download 1 GB or more later as you use it).

Thanks Cruisin. I checked the Manage Storage and all was clear.

It's just the Documents and Data that I'm confused about. I can't understand what documents and data I have stored on my phone.

My photos and music take up most of my storage on the phone. Then my apps. But documents and data on iTunes on iTunes shows as taking up 30+gb! I want to know what these docs are.

 

[cruisin]

Thanks Cruisin. I checked the Manage Storage and all was clear.

It's just the Documents and Data that I'm confused about. I can't understand what documents and data I have stored on my phone.

My photos and music take up most of my storage on the phone. Then my apps. But documents and data on iTunes on iTunes shows as taking up 30+gb! I want to know what these docs are.

Documents and Data is Apple speak for cache or essentially everything an app generates or downloads as you use it. Very little of it is actually what the average person calls documents so it is mostly just data. Some apps will trim this cache down but not all will or there might be a glitch. Android has a delete cache button for convenience but on ios you need to delete the app and reinstall it to recover the space. If you have an app that has months of activity stored, that will add to the cache.

Manage storage shows which app uses the most space for cache + app. If you have a lot of apps then the cumulative cache usage will add up. 50 apps with an average 200 MB cache will add up to 10 GB. A backup and restore should also trim down the cache as the backup doesn’t store the cache.

Some apps have an artificially small size to fit under the app store mobile data limit and then download the rest the first time you open the app (stored as cache). In this case there is nothing you can do other than deciding if you really need the specific app.

 

[scouser75]

Thanks again Cruisin. Would a shut down and restart remove the cache?

I looked under Manage Storage and most of the apps' Documents and Data is in the KB's not even MB's. So I'm thinking I must have some PDF's or Words documents stored somewhere. Is there any way of checking?

 

[Shirasaki]

Thanks again Cruisin. Would a shut down and restart remove the cache?

I looked under Manage Storage and most of the apps' Documents and Data is in the KB's not even MB's. So I'm thinking I must have some PDF's or Words documents stored somewhere. Is there any way of checking?

Restarting the device has no effect of cleaning those cache. Your best bet is to delete every and each app that takes more than 500MB of space but app itself is not so big, until “Documents and data” down to a point that you think it is reasonable, to find which app uses a lot of data. It’s also a process of purging unwanted apps.

Here are some of my games that are actively being played, which downloads a f ton of data during first launch and download more as time goes on.

 

[scouser75]

Thanks mate. That's top advice. I'll do that this weekend.