How can i fix this issue? I had no problem on iOS 12. I started realizing this problem after updating to iOS 13 beta 5 or 6. I downgraded back to iOS 12 thinking it was just a bug. My Documents and Sync went back to normal. However, after updating to iOS 13 yesterday, Documents & Sync skyrocketed!! I have turned off all apps in cellular data. I even turned off iCloud Drive completely but nothing worked.
iPhone 7
I've seen reports of "documents & sync" leeching data around 3 years ago (possible for different reasons, but still). Reasonable action would have been to split it up into multiple categories. Since We are now in 2020 and this hasn't happened (blame is on Apple here), I think the most logical way forward is to step-by-step narrow it down to the culprit.
Anyway, got my hands on the phone again and re-enabled all of these
Data usage before: 1.7MB ( 800 KB in docs & sync)
Disabling Wifi and Enabling 4G for a few minutes (2-3): 4MB (with 3 MB in docs & sync).
Ok, so the issue is still occuring. So let's continue, first resetting data-stats and then:
Leaving it for a few minutes (2-3): 0 bytes used...
Next test (randomly picking Whatsapp)
Leaving it for 2-3 minutes: 1.7MB in documents and sync
Counter-test
Leaving for a few minutes: 1.4 MB total, but this went into "Safari services" (merging back data... understandable). Documents & sync remains at 0.6KB.
Counter-counter test
Almost no activity for 2 minutes, after that documents & sync at 300KB.
So in this specific case it looks like WhatsApp is to blame for leeching the data. Looking into the WhatsApp setting-screen (in whatsapp itself:
So let's test this what "Network usage" means. Resetting the ios-datastats + whatsapp-statistics and re-doing the "Counter-counter test". Re-enabling 4G instantly shows the ios-data-statistics for "docs & sync" at 1.2 MB, but the WhatsApp-statistics remain at 0 (everything in that screen is zero or 0).
There still is an option to "Low Data Usage"while on cellular (enabling this one to see if it will keep leeching data).
-> nope -> 600KB usage within a few seconds after re-enabling 4G.
Next steps is to slowly re-enable the important apps again, and see if anything else misbehaves.
Note: I do think Apple is partially to blame by enabling apps to misbehave, by not splitting up "documents & sync" into categories per-app, and for letting this continue for at least 3 years looking at similar bugreports. It's quite disturbing a multi-billion company isn't able to track this down over a period of at least 3 years (and doesn't even help by making statistics visible) but instead depends on unpaid QA services from their customers.
I've seen reports of "documents & sync" leeching data around 3 years ago (possible for different reasons, but still). Reasonable action would have been to split it up into multiple categories. Since We are now in 2020 and this hasn't happened (blame is on Apple here), I think the most logical way forward is to step-by-step narrow it down to the culprit.
Anyway, got my hands on the phone again and re-enabled all of these
Data usage before: 1.7MB ( 800 KB in docs & sync)
Disabling Wifi and Enabling 4G for a few minutes (2-3): 4MB (with 3 MB in docs & sync).
Ok, so the issue is still occuring. So let's continue, first resetting data-stats and then:
Leaving it for a few minutes (2-3): 0 bytes used...
Next test (randomly picking Whatsapp)
Leaving it for 2-3 minutes: 1.7MB in documents and sync
Counter-test
Leaving for a few minutes: 1.4 MB total, but this went into "Safari services" (merging back data... understandable). Documents & sync remains at 0.6KB.
Counter-counter test
Almost no activity for 2 minutes, after that documents & sync at 300KB.
So in this specific case it looks like WhatsApp is to blame for leeching the data. Looking into the WhatsApp setting-screen (in whatsapp itself:
So let's test this what "Network usage" means. Resetting the ios-datastats + whatsapp-statistics and re-doing the "Counter-counter test". Re-enabling 4G instantly shows the ios-data-statistics for "docs & sync" at 1.2 MB, but the WhatsApp-statistics remain at 0 (everything in that screen is zero or 0).
There still is an option to "Low Data Usage"while on cellular (enabling this one to see if it will keep leeching data).
-> nope -> 600KB usage within a few seconds after re-enabling 4G.
Next steps is to slowly re-enable the important apps again, and see if anything else misbehaves.
Note: I do think Apple is partially to blame by enabling apps to misbehave, by not splitting up "documents & sync" into categories per-app, and for letting this continue for at least 3 years looking at similar bugreports. It's quite disturbing a multi-billion company isn't able to track this down over a period of at least 3 years (and doesn't even help by making statistics visible) but instead depends on unpaid QA services from their customers.
... and continuing with
... and 0 kb after a minute... so either it's one (or more) of these, or coincidentally we reached a point where the "document & sync" stopped, for whatever reason.
Update to ios 13.3.1 does NOT solve it, I just had another 100Mb of "Documents & Sync" data being eaten, and with more and more settings disabled, rapidly approaching the point of having an iPhone dumb-phone.
I still suspect syncing of iCloud Photo's is causing this, but if I want to disable it the phone gives two options:
So it is not possible to temporarily disable iCloud Photo's and have it simply leave my Photo's where they are (the are on the device already, be it in optimised form which is totally fine with me!). That also means if I would disable it for testing, I'd have to download everything again when turning iCloud Photo's back on... I have no words for that, really.
In the meanwhile I found another new toggle, which is hidden under settings/mobile data/mobile data options, where you can set it to "Low Data Mode" - with the explanation that "updates & background tasks such as syncing Photos is disabled".
That sounds like an option to try out the iCloud Photo's theory without being forced into an impossible situation, so I disabled this one now and let's see if it stops see if syncing of Photos is causing the problem.
Additionally, you can see some logs if you connect the phone to your computer and open "console", but it looks like it only logs current data (so no history). Actually, that means if I disable WiFi, it'll switch to 4G and maybe we'll get a clue from the logs about what's going on.
Anyone any ideas on what entries to look for to narrow down what "Documents & sync" will appear as?
I had contacted Apple Support and with step by step try-and-error we cone up with the following items to be checked/disabled if one wants to solve this issue:
Roaming Mobile Checklist:
Taking the above table as the starting point, changed the following settings:
Reset statistics, re-enabled 4G for 1-2 minutes and it stole another 10 MB or so.
Small update: I disabled everything in the iCloud category and the data-leeching stopped.
With only calendar enabled, after several days Documents & Sync is on 300kb, which is fine.
Will try and slowly turn on feature after feature to see which ones are causing data leeching.
So with WhatsApp disabled ( which starts leeching the instant you enabled 4G) , the behaviour now changes: Data is still leaking, but now in larger periodic intervals ( for a few minutes nothing happens and then another few MB's are leeched). So it looks like there are more culprits, which makes it a lot nastier to narrow down because it takes a lot more time before it happens..
Now I'm almost down to nokia 3310 feature-level, one big remaining suspect is iCloud Photo where actively Apple tries to make it as difficult as possible to disable it ("we'll delete all your photo's from your phone" vs "you don't have enough space to download your 150GB Photo collection").
So before I disable it - and who knows what happens (potentially iCloud "helpfully" synchronizing the "new state" to all other devices, erasing it from everywhere? Or maybe not? ) considering exporting my Photo-catalog from macOS as a backup. Obviously there is no option to export the date in the filename - but fortunately there's a script to workaround that hurdle. After that can try to disable iCloud on the Phone to see if that will stop the vampiric leeching of the iPhone.
One more idea... my WhatsApp testing was done with exactly 1 of the phones connected to 4G, the others were all on WiFi (or completely disabled)... Maybe the moment two phones are used they start interfering with each other... Crazy idea, but also worth some experimentation. Leaving 1 phone on 4G and checking out what will happen to data, before putting a 2nd on 4G.
Same problem here. I’ve turned off virtually everything and the iPhone keeps chewing through my mobile data. No problems before with iOS 12. Seems like a bug to me, it’s ignoring some setting and keeps synchronizing iCloud Drive or something?
"Low Data Mode" is enable now, but data for "Documents & sync"went up from 105 to 114 now in a matter of minutes the moment I disable WiFi and it switched to 4G. So first impression is that this won't solve it either.
Thanks for your suggestions, so update:
"Low Data Mode" is enabled now, "Documents & sync"went up from 105 to 114 now in a matter of minutes the moment I disabled WiFi and the phone switched to 4G.
Continued by disabling every single app under the "Mobile Data" setting-screen (most of it were already disabled, leaving only critital ones - now took it a step further and disabled totally everything).
Google drive and Onedrive are not installed and Photo's was already disabled
Wi-Fi assist: was already disabled
So that brings us to the following summary on the iPhone SE
(tried to find every hidden option which might be even vaguely related to stealing data - if I missed something I'd be glad to hear it):
... and after enabling 4G and resetting the statistics, "documents and sync" instantly stole 2MB of data (not much before I disabled it again, but enough to be convinced the issue persists).
I just called in to apple support. They were beyond useless. They told me to turn off icloud drive under apple id --->icloud. Told them, i already have icloud syncing disabled for cellular. This would mean that i wouldn't be able to use my icloud drive at any time on my ipad. I'm at a loss. Apple doesn't seem to know what to do. They are guessing. Need someone a bit more technical to help us. The rep i called was a manager.
I have the same problem with iOS 13.2
Same here and the support is unable to provide any explanation. all my data, gone in two days, already have to pay for the overdue usage. Thanks apple...
I’m having the same problem...I’ve tried signing out and signing in of my iCloud account, restoring my phone ...all unsuccessful. Documents and sync has chewed through a third of my data. 😡
Documents & Sync using up all my data after updating to iOS 13
