Is there anything I can do about this extremely vague block of data that’s taking up 30% of my phone’s storage? Mind you, this isn’t the operating system itself, as that’s listed as its own category.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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Unused storage is wasted storage. The system will free up space when other apps require it.
It makes my blood boils when someone says this on a ram/storage shortage topic
No, not really, at all.
That's more for ram than SSD. Unnecessary ssd use wears it out.
Only for write operations. Reads are effectively free, and cached files are invariably predominantly read heavy.
Even then, the wear effects of writes on SSDs are exaggerated. Improvements in the technology and wear leveling have made them roughly as reliable as spinning disk.
For a phone, the storage is expected to remain viable beyond the expected usage lifetime of the device. It doesn't really matter if caching wears storage a little faster if the device is inoperable before it's a problem.
Also, it's not true for RAM either. The OS will automatically cache files as it sees fit. Helps with video players and the like.
how does that mean it’s not true for RAM tho? caching is about the time it takes to (compute and) load things into the RAM and RAM r/w operations are pretty much always faster than disk
Because the people that say "unused RAM is wasted RAM" have zero understanding of what file caching is and think that RAM only includes program data.
file caching is making use of unused ram which is what people mean by "unused ram is wasted ram". you are saying the same thing.
the SSD is not necessarily being "used" (written to) more here. The issue is that data isn't being cleared when OP wants, but that doesn't cause wear.
If you’re lucky it will clear it. There were some folks complaining that they couldn’t install a system update because there “wasn’t enough room” according to the update process. This despite caches that could be cleared or apps that could be unloaded.
Indeed; my system data is currently at 17.78GB, I have 21GB free, and the last OS update still required me to offload a bunch of apps to free up enough space to install—despite there ALSO being a 10GB reserve for OS updates.
Bullshit that would cut into the iCloud revenue
That's usually called "Virtual Memory" rather than "Storage", as a well written app will take as much storage as it needs when first run, then manage cache size itself.