Apple Watch Series 3- Storage Issues

Hello and welcome to Apple Support Communities rsruss67,

I see that you're having an issue with the storage on your Apple Watch. I can certainly understand your concern, and I'd be happy to provide you with some information that could help.

Have you tried to restart your Apple Watch and then check to see if the storage remains the same? If so, then next step would be to unpair the Apple Watch from your iPhone and pair it back and test one more time.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch

Let me know how this goes and if the issue persists.

Have a great day!

Hi All,

My repair way was same then hasanfromsakarya‘s.

1. unpair and delete my watch from the iCloud
2. switch off the message sync in the iCloud

3.delete the backup of the message from the iCloud

you have to go in the message menu, than you can manage and delete it.

4.delete the watch app from my phone and direct restart it

5.install the watch app, repair the watch with new one.

zoltan

Thank you all so much. This is really insightful. Definitely seems like some sort of iCloud issue. I checked mine out and was having a little glitch with my notes that then seemed to resolve itself, but I unpaired, erased, and deleted the Watch App from my phone and restarted. Setting up as a new Watch now for the 10+ time, but fingers crossed. Was sharing my frustration with other on this issue here and here, so I've linked to this page there.

Aside from what you've tried, I've also seen Reminders be an issue for some, particularly if you attach a lot of files or images to your reminders.

I'm posting this as my Series 3 storage issue doesn't seem to be related to iCloud, but to Siri instead. There seems to be an widespread issue affecting various Apple Watch models and dating back to WatchOS 6 in that the local Siri voice pack (~0.5GB in size) doesn't correctly download and apply. Predominantly this seems related to people using the British Female voice. If you have this issue the most obvious symptom is that when you hold two fingers to the dial the Watch will speak the time in the more robotic VoiceOver voice instead of Siri. If so your Watch will be continuously trying to download that voice pack whenever it is put on charge, fail, delete the download, and then start all over again. Although it deletes the failed download I've noticed that over time the free space decreases, as though it's not deleting all of it. On a series 3 this is more obvious as we don't have that much free space to begin with!

If you think this is affecting you (try holding two fingers to the dial to tell) I'd recommend first turning Siri off on your Watch by going to Settings on the Watch, and disabling the three Siri options ('Hey Siri', 'Raise to speak', and 'Digital Crown'), turn the Watch off, back on again, re-enable Siri, and then following dave-porter's post here... https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251845629?answerId=254126905022#254126905022. Although it didn't work all the way for me (I got it to work with the American voice, but not back to British), it might be worth a try.

Same exact issue. my watch has very few apps, no photos or music and randomly I get a storage full message. Once I restart the watch storage goes back to normal but only for a few days.

this seems to be a log bug or a buffer overflow that builds up and takes up all the space available. Tried to locate the file but no luck.

I’m on watchOS 6.2.5 with a series 3 version.

I'm having this issue too. After reboot the memory is temporarily restored. I have to reboot about every week to make sure I don't run out of storage. Here's a before and after reboot screenshot.

I have the same issue! I have to delete all my texts and notifications to get rid of the out of storage message.. if it doesn't work I restart. And yes I have tried deleting everything off my series 3 apple watch.. It did noting =( Apple, Please make Watch OS 7 Smaller!

I have the same issue WatchOS 6.2.6 Apple Watch 3 GPS edition.

I just did a new setup for the 2nd time and same issue persists. After a few days all storage is filled up, the watch is super slow, doesn’t even store my stand ups. 0mb available. No apps installed. No music. Just base new install without restore.

The Apple Watch speaker sounds bad too... not sure if thats related through

Apple please fix this in an update. Soon, Thank you

I have the exact same issue. I have unpaired the watch and started as a new watch at least 5 times. Still, about every week, I get a message saying that the storage is full despite having no music or podcasts on the watch, my photos are down to 25. In the usage view, there is no way that anything is taking up a total of 4.7 gb out of my apple 3 watch

To figure out where is the problem, just for a test, yesterday I bought a second apple watch (same model series 3 gps) and after 1 day I have the same problem of my other watch storage is full ( the watch is clean no apps no photos no music). So it isn't an HW problem, the problem is probably in the icloud account the fill the watch with something (maybe te message app??).

APPLE fix this thing!

Dear All,

I have this problem also.

I have tried the factory reset, unpair, repair with iCloud, repair with new device, but unfortunately neither could help me.

After 1 hour of repair the storage is full and can’t download the latest sw: 6.2.6. The current version is: 6.2.5.

There is no picture, no music, only 3 app and I deleted the 3rd party apps also.

This problem was started with 6.2.x as version.

thanks,

zoltan

Hi,

Today I unpaired from my iCloud account and paired to an other. It worked well, the storage had 3,5G free space and I could to update it to the newest WatchOS (6.2.8). After 6 hours I unpaired and paired it to my account. Unfortunately it didn’t help, because about in 1 hour the storage was full, despite the synchronisation of the music, fotos etc... were forbidden. What did the watch synchronise to full the storage? Messages???

thanks,

zoltan

Hello on my watch series 3 gps 6.2.8 problem seems fixed after one week of the N+ restore.

IMHO the problem is with the icloud synch and specific with messages sync. try to change the message settings without duplicate the Iphone setting (put as personalised). Do this after a restore as a new watch.

Hello,

thanks, it is working. The problem was the huge big message folder in the iCloud.

At first I switched off the message synchronising in the iCloud (with delete all message data), reinstall the watch app, force restart the phone and pair the watch.