Uninstalled apps using cellular data in iOS

Of the people that are having issues, who has a VPN profile setup on your iPhone?

I was having the same issue as the OP until I deleted all VPN profiles and rebooted my iPhone. It’s been a few hours with cell data turned ON and my “Uninstalled Apps” data usage is sitting at 0. It would appear that this is indeed an iOS bug (I’m on 13.3.1).

I have found some settings that might actually be helpful. Try the following:

• Remove home from Home App (don't know if this is needed, though)
• Then go to Settings -> <apple ID> -> iCloud and disable the following: Home, Health, Wallet, Game Center, Siri
• Bonus: go to Settings -> Mobile Data -> Mobile Data Options -> Voice & Data -> de-select VoLTE ON!

My results: Uninstalled Apps data consumption: 0.1kB for the last 4 hours, compared with cca 20MB per hour.

I don't know which of the iCloud settings made the trick. I would bet on Home App & Health considering other post on the Internet. I consumed already too much data to Uninstalled Apps this month to make more test.

Note that all these apps had Mobile Data turned OFF already (as well as WiFI assist, iCloud Drive, Files, Settings, Music, Photos).

Good luck!

I’ve found a solution to my leakage. Someone posted earlier in this tread that it was caused by Eve products in HomeKit. I have the Eve Weather. I had tried blocking the Eve and Home apps from accessing cellular data but that did not stop the leakage. When I delete the Eve Weather from HomeKit I went one full week with no leakage. I reinstalled the Eve Weather in HomeKit and in less than a day there was over 1 MB of leakage. I’ve just repeated the above steps with the same results.

I will report my findings to Elgato concerning this issue. I certainly won’t buy any more of their products until the problem is resolved. Although there does still seem to be an issue with iOS 13 given others have the problem without Eve products or using HomeKit.

Do not believe Apple has a grip on this. Apple Support’s recent official advice related from their engineering team was to turn off mobile data when I don’t need it. W T F ?!!? Completely misses the point of a mobile device. Bunch of bozos.

As of 13.3 and all previous 13.x at time of posting), uninstalled apps counter is garbage, it increases even if resetting it to zero and not uninstalling apps.

Here’s what I’ve done that has kept my usage of uninstalled apps to 2-5 MB per day.

• turned HomeKit off on all my family account devices
• left for a couple days until all devices fell off as options in HomeKit devices and bridges (meaning don’t use HomeKit for a couple days.)
• then re-added them

I have too much invested in my setup to rebuild it, perhaps burning it all to the ground may work better. Unfortunate their are no tools to backup and restore a config, or even display it in a logical manner to allow a quick rebuild. Shame on Apple, this is not a 1.0 product, it’s been around since iOS 8. But this recent update has screwed it up.

Hope what I’ve done will work for others.

I have been having the same issue and I've read both threads. I tried many of the suggestions lists without luck.

The last thing I did was toggling wifi assist ON and then back OFF. Same for iCloud Drive. Toggle On then OFF. These have always been off.

My data usage has gone from 10 mb per minute to 10k per minute. So far this new lower rate of data usage has held for about 10 minutes. I am posting here just in case anyone else is looking for something else to try.

Because of the ridiculously high cost of cell service in Canada, for the last 10 years I’ve used a prepaid service with a low data cap (100 MB per month). I almost never exceed that cap, until I installed iOS 13. After a couple of weeks I got the 90% data usage advisory from the carrier. In looking at the usage, in addition to the usual apps usage, at the top of the list Uninstalled Apps data was over 50 MB. I had never seen this category show up before. After researching what this category was for, I too reset the stats and have not uninstalled any apps. I went for a day before checking the stats and was well over 10 MB. Now I was being billed for over usage by the carrier. The only way to stop the usage is to turn off all cellular data. I tried disabling access for all the individual apps currently installed and enabled cellular data after resetting the stats. Within ten minutes there was 512 KB of Uninstalled Apps data. In about 20 minutes it was over 1MB. I’ve disabled all cellular data until the end of the billing peri because the carrier (looking at you, Bell) charges by the MB for over usage.

If there’s not an update soon specific to this bug, I’ll try a complete reinstall of the iOS and apps. Unfortunately I’m on the road right now and not having access to cellular data is a real pain!!

Resetting the statistics doesn't prevent continued data leakage. It just provides a new baseline to start from.

Since the last post, I tried swapping SIMs with my wife in case it was related to the carrier account. No change. Today I enrolled in the beta program and tried 13.2 beta 2. The amount if leakage was significantly reduced, KBs instead of MBs in short time periods, but still occurring, even with all apps disabled for access to cellular data. I've not uninstalled an app in weeks. I submitted several logs to the beta program at the times the leakage occurred. Maybe they'll see something.

In the meantime I'm restoring back to 13.1. There's the new release 13.1.3 and it's take a long time to download. I'm hoping it may have an impact on reducing the leakage. Otherwise my options are 1) keep cellular data off (which means I have an expensive iPod Touch with a phone), 2) call support and see if I can swap out the phone with an identical replacement (SE), 3) pay for a higher data cap (at least $30 more a month), or 4) get a whole new phone and hope that clears up the issue (might be cheaper in the long run that option 3).

Or maybe my beta test results will result in a fix in 13.2.

A few days after my last post, I turned cellular data back for good on with all apps (except Find My) disabled, enabling apps only when I need them then disabling again. There was one burst of 1.2 MB of Uninstalled Apps data near the beginning and since then, nada.

So, was it installing the beta then restoring to 13.1.3? Other than a few app updates I’ve not made any other changes.

Or was there some strange interaction with the carriers resulting from iOS 13 that caused this strange data leakage that has since been fixed at the carrier end?

Yes, use HomeKit (Apple TV and two HomePods as hubs) with one Eve device (Weather). Since I tried the 13.1.3 beta my Uninstalled Apps data has been just kilobytes at a time. After two weeks plus a day since the last reset it’s just 3.3 MB, and some of that is legitimate uninstalled app data.

If HomeKit remote access data is being lumped into Uninstalled Apps data, then you would think it should be under its own category in System Services. Will submit a feedback suggestion to hopefully start that process.

Bump.

Any updates on this?

I have the same problem. Yesterday I totally nuked my phone and installed everything fresh - not even a restore from backup. And within minutes I was getting cellular data usage from an "uninstalled app." I'm already at 1gig in just 20 hours.

Not sure if this is related or not, but my "DNS Services" is using a ton of data as well. This should be very low given the size of a DNS lookup and it's already at almost 1MB in 20 hours.

I've been on WiFi almost the entire time too. I left the house for a bit this morning, but I'd say 90% of the time I've been on Wifi.

Any news on this problem?

FYI - There's another thread with the same issue and no solution - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250660254

My unexplained uninstalled apps usage was not an issue for quite a while, until recently when it was jumping up by ~20 MB at a time. It occurred to me that this third period of big jumps of data was happening while I was on a road trip just like the other two times. Could it be related to passing through multiple carrier cells? I use Bell Mobility. Is this consistent with others having this issue? Could it be carrier based?

I’m sending more feedback to Apple. Maybe if they get enough complaints about the problem they’ll dedicate more time and resources to the problem.

After my last post, the uninstalled apps data dropped to just KB at a time. Since my last stats reset on Nov 12 (billing date) I have just 740 KB of Uninstalled Apps data.

Don’t know what to say, other than start a conspiracy theory that upgrading to iOS 13 allows some foreign (or domestic?) security service to access your iOS device and suck data from you using a malicious app inserted on the carrier’s equipment. The initial dump is large then tapers off. I expect it would easily be done from a Surface as well.

Or it’s just a bug in iOS 13.

Me and my wife are also having this problem. A week ago my wife lost over a gigabyte in a day to uninstalled apps and triggered her data limit warning - which was how we noticed.

i thought mine has settled down and was ok now, so I put mobile data on again. Just noticed though that it has used over 200 mb today.

I have also had occasions where it has been using up cell data even when connected to WiFi. ( I have the WiFi assist set to off ).

I spoke to Apple support over a week ago. While the guy there has been really helpful - running tests etc ( he was able to run a live rest on the phone while uninstalled apps was using up data ) we are now over a week down the line and no fix.