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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.
Just as well Apple doesn’t charge a premium for storage space ✊💦💦💦
This happened to me and it ended up being the mail app.
That’s mail, downloaded songs, app data that’s not needed for the app to function… was 50 GB Spotify for me
I find it really annoying too. Unfortunately this has been a thing since the earliest apple devices. Back then it was called "Other" and not much besides the name change has improved. You'd think that apple would add a way to clean it manually but no, probably in the next decade.
With modern devices having a minimum of 128gb it's not usually a problem in daily usage though. Only when it shoots up to many tens of GB then you can do the date trick.
If you temporarily set the date a few years in the future and wait a bit, the system will try deleting the cache. Just be careful of expiration for SMS chats.
Do you need this space right now? It should free it up automatically if space is tight.
Is your phone out of storage?
This value will fluctuate according to system needs
iOS might wait to purge the cache until it needs the space
Wow I just checked and mine is at 25gb on iPhone 13, so no AI stuff.
This is a very widespread bug that causes any empty space to fill up quickly.
The solution is pretty convoluted (involves changing the phone date), but two main culprits are Instagram and Discord, which use phone cache to store data where the system doesn’t log as app data. Try remove these and check if System Data got smaller.
The better solution is to change phone’s date 1 year into future and wait a while so iOS can be tricked into delete “old cache”. You can google it for full instructions.
Interesting. I don’t have either of those apps but I do have way more than most people I assume. I’ll look into it. Glad I’ve got a 512gb model.
Cold also be to do with the fact that I’ve been transferring data without a clean install since iPhone 4s lol
Actually backing-up and reloading that backup also helps since the backup doesn’t carry any cache or logs. I’ve done it on my SO’s 12 mini just a few hours ago. So you don’t need a clean install still :D
Thanks for the info! I’ll keep it in mind when I can bothered to do something about it.
I've found it to happen when an app schedules something for deletion, but the OS doesn't get around to actually completing the deletion operation for one reason or another. A normal restart seems to fix it up for me.
The advice I’ve seen is to back up your phone (iCloud or iTunes), factory reset, then restore your backup.
These things get bigger and bigger the older your phone is, because OS updates seem to always leave more and more shit laying around (probably for disaster recovery in case the update goes sideways).
Windows has a command you can run to purge all the old update shit to free up space. I wish Apple would get off their ass and implement the same.
Cable backup to Mac’s the best way for some reason is that right?
iCloud or local Mac backup is the same in terms of data. A local Mac backup is significantly faster.
Local backup saves sensitive data which doesn’t go into iCloud backups. For the most part it doesn’t matter because that data can usually be restored from the keychain and secure enclave, but that takes longer and can still miss some bits you have to enter yourself.
Thought it was something like that ya!
I like the idea of doing a full DFU restore from IPSW when getting a new phone to go full paranoia mode. Haven’t done but… anyway then local restore.
I don't like the lack of a meaningful explanation. "System Data" might as well be "stuff" and I don't trust it.
Then again, Apple is known for their toddler-compatible interfaces. Maybe they thought that an actual explanation or breakdown would be too complicated and scary for their average user.
I mean... Caches, logs, and other system data currently in use by the system is a fairly decent explanation. Computers need space to put stuff while it's working. It's not particularly odd to not go to extremes labeling the contents of the junk pile that'll get discarded if anything comes up.
Linux is about as open as a system can be and it has several piles of roughly undocumented junk that can be difficult to know exactly what they contain.
There's nothing about it to "not trust". If it wanted to hide something from you it wouldn't tell you it was there and refuse to explain fully, it would just not tell you at all. It's not like you can check it's work.
Do a factory reset. Mine got up to 30GB. I did a factory reset and now it’s at 8GB
This 100%. Friend had theirs get to some 50+ Gb. After backing it up to iTunes, resetting the phone, then restoring to the backup, it all cleared up. My guys is it's some sort of bug, (or collection of bugs), that prevents temp files from getting deleted properly. After the restore, all she had to do was reset face id and log into a few apps. All the stuff was still there minus expected stuff like Spotify downloads.
Metadata, caches, obsolete files and stuff, uncleaned leftovers from miscellaneous apps, out of sync forgotten bytes, and the Ghost in the machine…
A big chunk of that is probably on-device AI models that shareholders demand Apple force on its customers to demonstrate that they’re not being left behind.
That’s not listed in the System Data. Apple Intelligence is shown under OS and is about 6GB
that sounds like it should be in the OS category
YMMV, but this problem went away for me when I disabled syncing to my MacBook via WiFi. My guess is that it was caching backup images but never successfully copying and removing them.
Work computer recently had 400gb of 500 filled with system data stuff. /Tmp doesnt get cleaned except for on reboot.
What lazy scripts are leaving stuff behind in /tmp when they finish with it? It should be cleared out by whatever process put it there.
Xcrun altool
Apply the trick of flight mode and forward 1 year in system date
What does that do?
Presumably it instantly causes all logs to expire as they're now more than 1 year old, so the system deletes them.
When I had the problem on my wife's phone, the answer ended up being text messages and safari. This was 5 years ago so I don't know if it changed but despite the apps saying it used x storage under storage, it was actually kept in System.
Lol mine is 20 GB. And iOS takes 12.5GB. Thankfully I got the 256GB model, use Immich to backup images and videos, use Paperless-ngx for storing my docs and know how to use and manage a filesystem (however shitty it is on iOS) unlike most normies who would just let everything pile up and get confused on why there is no C: drive on iOS (real story lol).
Im not endorsing it, but It makes more sense when you realize that the difference between the different Apple OSs is only the UI. They are all the same OS called Darwin. They have gotten sloppy about the optimizations between devices since they started spinning their own silicon.