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iPhone storage keeps going back to full after deleting many things daily

I have an iPhone XS 64 GB running on the latest firmware (iOS 13.5.1). I also have 200GB of iCloud storage that I use across all my apple devices. I still have over 100GB of free storage left on my iCloud. For the past couple of weeks, my iPhone has repeatingly been telling me that my iPhone storage is full. All my photos are saved in the cloud. I have deleted many and emptied out the recently deleted in my phone. It gave me the option to offload unused apps to iCloud, which freed up 7GB, but then a couple days later it claimed my storage is full again. I also deleted some apps too in hope it would free space. In addition, I cleared my safari history and website data which freed 5 GB, but then the next day my phone storage went back to full. I have deleted conversations and big files, yet theres no help in that. I look at whats using the most memory on my phone storage through the settings app and tried to delete some stuff. I have also deleted some apps and reinstalled them to clear some of those apps memory. I searched many thing online on how to free up memory. It says my system memory is 6.77GB and "Other" is 31.21GB. I noticed that the "Other" section keeps increasing. When I deleted the Safari History and Website data, the "Other" section went down to 27GB then the next day it refilled to 32GB. At this point, I am convinced the phone is trying to fill up my memory with something every time I delete anything. Nothing is working and it is getting frustrating. Can someone help me out with this?

iPhone XS, iOS 13

Posted on Jul 1, 2020 10:11 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 3, 2020 2:22 PM

I have an iPhone XR that the same thing is happening to. No matter what I delete the other storage keeps increasing. I did a factory reset a few weeks ago and my phone worked for a while but a few days ago it was completely full all of a sudden with over 40GB of other storage and it’s happening all over again.


I think either my phone is a lemon or there’s an app that’s taking up an abnormal amount of cache/storage. I really hope Apple helps with this as it makes it impossible to use my phone to even check email.

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115 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 3, 2020 2:22 PM in response to mehde112

I have an iPhone XR that the same thing is happening to. No matter what I delete the other storage keeps increasing. I did a factory reset a few weeks ago and my phone worked for a while but a few days ago it was completely full all of a sudden with over 40GB of other storage and it’s happening all over again.


I think either my phone is a lemon or there’s an app that’s taking up an abnormal amount of cache/storage. I really hope Apple helps with this as it makes it impossible to use my phone to even check email.

Aug 20, 2020 5:32 PM in response to brianna426

Hey guys — I found a solution. I backed up my phone on my computer and did a factory reset. It cleared up so much of my storage. I also added all my pictures to google photos and deleted them all from my photo album.


follow this link for the factory reset.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphone/reset-iphone-3596892/%3famp


hope it helps!!

Mar 27, 2021 7:05 AM in response to Dulce_bxx

You can’t buy storage for an iPhone; it will never have more than it had when you bought it. What you bought is iCloud storage, which is used for syncing data to other devices and for backing up. See→What's the difference between device storage and iCloud storage? - Apple Support


You will have to free up storage by deleting stuff. Start by going to Settings/General/iPhone Storage to look over what is taking up the most space, and what you can delete.

Feb 8, 2021 3:38 PM in response to gabzhd

I did a reset and recovered my iPhone with iCloud Drive disabled.

But now the Photos recovered from iCloud seems to take much more storage than in the iCloud (412.5gb vs 373.5gb)


How can this be?

How can it be that Apple still doesn't do anything about this issue? So many people reporting same issue but no solution for this error.


Like most of you, my iPhone 11 Pro 512gb got almost full even though I was keep deleting files. Suddenly the phone was restarting and got completely blocked.

Apple care guided me to erase it completely and recover everything through the iCloud backup.

In the end I listened to them and it took me 2 weeks to recover EVERYTHING from iCloud - 2 days ago it stopped from 'recovering' more data.


At the beginning of this 'recover from iCloud backup' process, thanks to some of your comments, I decided to disable iCloud Drive. I aimed to avoid my iPhone to try to 'recover' too many files and then to get an error that the recovery requires much more storage than the iPhone has.

(Maybe @gabzhd could try this too)

At the moment seems to be very low storage in 'Other' (let's hope this remains the same from now on).


One thing that surprised me is that now Photos & Videos in iCloud are 373.5gb BUT on my iPhone Photos & Videos are shown 412.5gb


How can this be?

How can it be that Apple still doesn't do anything about this issue? So many people reporting same issue but no solution for this error.



Mar 28, 2021 4:43 PM in response to mehde112

Anyone figure this out yet? My “other” section is taking up over half of my storage. I don’t use iCloud, don’t use Safari, hardly use any actual Apple Apps. I just switched back over from a Google Pixel because of how stupid iMessage is with any other device and I’m starting to regret it. Has anyone figured this out?




[Edited by Moderator]

Feb 6, 2021 10:49 AM in response to arvind140

I had the same issue, I have been able to solve it. Doing an iphone reset is not strong enough to clear the “others” sometimes.(for whatever reason that is I don’t know)

So this is what I did I backed up and restored my iPhone on iTunes and that was able to wipe the “others” from my storage.

  1. Just run your iPhone on iTunes on your MacBook or windows device
  2. Click on your iPhone
  3. click restore iPhone
  4. There will be an option telling you to back up before restore, if you have done that already just go to restore without back up
  5. When you click on restore iPhone, iTunes will download the software needed to restore your iPhone; this will take a while, it took me like 4 to 5hours probably because of network issues. It may be less depending on how fast your internet is.
  6. When it starts downloading don’t pause or move the phone till it’s finished
  7. When it’s done the software will wipe your phone and restore it to factory reset and that will wipe the “other” storage problem

iPhone storage keeps going back to full after deleting many things daily

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