Hello,
I need some advice please. My brother is an absolute noob about those things and I only have a short window of time to help him directly because of health issues, so I should be prepared best before doing it.
My brother's Xs (64GB) ist more than full. It is very strange, he sent me a screenshot shwowing over 80GB of Voice Messages on it even though they seem to be in the cloud and the bar had been completely red for Media. I just attached a picture at the bottom of this message. I don't even believe he ever produced that many GB of voice messages, but who knows... He used it much for a while.
Best would be a quick way to fix this somehow without switching the phone. I couldn't do much myself only giving him some tips by talking on the phone, like turning of, doing an update (what didn't work without free storage) and try to clean up some things on other devices too, that might sync to the phone.
But he needs a phone with more storage anyway and if he completely needs to reset it for a fix, it's better to use my spare phone in the meantime until he decided what to get, that doesn't should take more time.
He already activated "Offload Unused Apps" and "Optimize Photos" and deleted some Apps. There is also a dowloaded but not installed iOS 17 update what doesn't appear anywhere in the storage management to delete it.
I told him to delete Voice Messages also on other devices so they don't sync. Not sure if he did this correct and he said he deleted almost everything he doesn't need or put it into the cloud and stopped some things syncing to iCloud.
Nothing helped, the storage is still full and he needs to install an important app, what he needs in the next days.
Luckily he didn't update his phone for longer and is still on 16.x like an iPhone 8 Plus (256 GB) I have as a spare phone, what is completely deleted and isn't logged in with any AppleID to any iCloud/AppStore/iTunes/iMessage/FaceTime stuff.
If there is still this 30 day limit for iTunes stuff, it's much longer logged out and deauthorized. But I don't think he even uses anything like Music, Books, TV and Podcasts. He only uses Spotify and also has no offline media in there. And iMessage rarely. I think it's only me who refuses to use WhatsApp.
He also does not use Apple Pay, so there are no cards to reactivate. I know that he might need a new activation letter from his bank for the TAN-App to do transfers again, if it can't be activated by the old phone what then is deactivated for this at the same time. Every bank is doing this differently. Some need to send a letter for every new activation of the app and some have just once sent a QR code you can scan as often as you like and some allow to transfer the activation to a new device by scanning a code within the App.
If this storage issue is only something software caused, could there be any problems to transfer the data?
I think he has an older iOS 16 version than my 8 Plus what has the latest version of iOS 16 installed. Even if updates were possible storage-wise, he could only update to iOS 17.
Does it matter in any case, that the 8 Plus is older hardware than the Xs? Biometric data won't be transferred anyway to a "new" device.
Is the best way to transfer data still making a local encrypted backup on a Mac or should a direct transfer from device to device be enough? If I remember correctly iCloud backup is always missing some things. Don't know about much about the device to device option, if it has any disadvantage.
I don't know if he even synced that phone to any Mac but if not, can I sync it with mine? Maybe in a newly created user account or should he better bring his own Mac even if he never connected the devices directly? I don't think he has any music library anymore, same for books and TV.
Thanks in advance for your help.
P.S.: This is how his phone storage looked like, a few days ago, when he first told me about the problem.
Now that I see it again I recognized that there is this WhatsApp Inc. stuff on top and you can see there is also the app itself at the end of the list. Does anyone know what the upper one is? Maybe backup data?
But I think can research this for myself. Just wondered because I didn't recognize the second WhatsApp before.
I need some advice please. My brother is an absolute noob about those things and I only have a short window of time to help him directly because of health issues, so I should be prepared best before doing it.
My brother's Xs (64GB) ist more than full. It is very strange, he sent me a screenshot shwowing over 80GB of Voice Messages on it even though they seem to be in the cloud and the bar had been completely red for Media. I just attached a picture at the bottom of this message. I don't even believe he ever produced that many GB of voice messages, but who knows... He used it much for a while.
Best would be a quick way to fix this somehow without switching the phone. I couldn't do much myself only giving him some tips by talking on the phone, like turning of, doing an update (what didn't work without free storage) and try to clean up some things on other devices too, that might sync to the phone.
But he needs a phone with more storage anyway and if he completely needs to reset it for a fix, it's better to use my spare phone in the meantime until he decided what to get, that doesn't should take more time.
He already activated "Offload Unused Apps" and "Optimize Photos" and deleted some Apps. There is also a dowloaded but not installed iOS 17 update what doesn't appear anywhere in the storage management to delete it.
I told him to delete Voice Messages also on other devices so they don't sync. Not sure if he did this correct and he said he deleted almost everything he doesn't need or put it into the cloud and stopped some things syncing to iCloud.
Nothing helped, the storage is still full and he needs to install an important app, what he needs in the next days.
Luckily he didn't update his phone for longer and is still on 16.x like an iPhone 8 Plus (256 GB) I have as a spare phone, what is completely deleted and isn't logged in with any AppleID to any iCloud/AppStore/iTunes/iMessage/FaceTime stuff.
If there is still this 30 day limit for iTunes stuff, it's much longer logged out and deauthorized. But I don't think he even uses anything like Music, Books, TV and Podcasts. He only uses Spotify and also has no offline media in there. And iMessage rarely. I think it's only me who refuses to use WhatsApp.
He also does not use Apple Pay, so there are no cards to reactivate. I know that he might need a new activation letter from his bank for the TAN-App to do transfers again, if it can't be activated by the old phone what then is deactivated for this at the same time. Every bank is doing this differently. Some need to send a letter for every new activation of the app and some have just once sent a QR code you can scan as often as you like and some allow to transfer the activation to a new device by scanning a code within the App.
If this storage issue is only something software caused, could there be any problems to transfer the data?
I think he has an older iOS 16 version than my 8 Plus what has the latest version of iOS 16 installed. Even if updates were possible storage-wise, he could only update to iOS 17.
Does it matter in any case, that the 8 Plus is older hardware than the Xs? Biometric data won't be transferred anyway to a "new" device.
Is the best way to transfer data still making a local encrypted backup on a Mac or should a direct transfer from device to device be enough? If I remember correctly iCloud backup is always missing some things. Don't know about much about the device to device option, if it has any disadvantage.
I don't know if he even synced that phone to any Mac but if not, can I sync it with mine? Maybe in a newly created user account or should he better bring his own Mac even if he never connected the devices directly? I don't think he has any music library anymore, same for books and TV.
Thanks in advance for your help.
P.S.: This is how his phone storage looked like, a few days ago, when he first told me about the problem.
Now that I see it again I recognized that there is this WhatsApp Inc. stuff on top and you can see there is also the app itself at the end of the list. Does anyone know what the upper one is? Maybe backup data?
But I think can research this for myself. Just wondered because I didn't recognize the second WhatsApp before.
