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

gavriel124 wrote:

hey,

did you find a solution for this problem?

Other can be real data; see→What is "Other" and What Can I Do About I… - Apple Community. But it can also indicate storage corruption. If it is, you can back up your phone, then restore that backup, which will clear up storage corruption if that is the cause.

See this Apple support link—>Clear Other storage on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Upgrade to the latest available version, as of March 22 that is 14.4.1.

Same symptom, different problem. Until recently (iOS 13.5, specifically) this issue was caused by a sync that was interrupted before it completed. iOS 13.5 had a bug that would move deleted content to Other. That problem was fixed by updating iOS to 13.7 or later (14.0, 14.0.1). However, the original problem of an interrupted sync still remains.

Dear Mr. Finch, why do you keep reposting the same thing? It makes us more frustrated. We have read the 5 pages of answers and tried what you keep on suggesting, it does not solve the problem, maybe the tagging of the stuff as other yes, but it does not solve the issue, except for a couple of days until the phone re-downloads all the data. The issue seems to be iCloud drive which keeps trying to fit all the data on the cloud onto the phone. The issue, unfortunately, has not been fixed, unless you remove iCloud drive from the phone and do without its excellent features. Will be glad if you can post something in that respect, that actually solves the issue. Thank you.

Sagan_Stiley wrote:

The issue seems to be iCloud drive which keeps trying to fit all the data on the cloud onto the phone.

That isn’t an issue, it is EXACTLY what iCloud is designed to do. It mirrors everything on your phone. It is not a way to archive data, it is a way to sync data between multiple devices. Anything you add on your phone will be added in iCloud, anything you delete from your phone will be deleted in iCloud, and anything that you edit on your phone (such as updating a contact’s info) will be updated in iCloud.

And the opposite is also true; anything that you add, delete or change in iCloud will be replicated on your phone. And if you have other devices linked to iCloud anything that you change on those devices will also be changed in iCloud and on your phone.

If this is not what you want then don’t sync all data to iCloud. Go to Settings/[your name]/iCloud and turn off switches for items you don’t want to sync to iCloud.

However, that is not the problem that most posters in this thread are facing.

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.

@gavriel124 I’m not sure if it’s helpful for you, but a potential solution could be to disable “iCloud drive”

By this the size of “Other” - grey area on your storage print screen can be closer to zero - don’t know if it would work now when your iPhone is almost fully restored or when you restore it again.

I seen this tip mentioned by others and for me it might have worked - the “iCloud drive” didn’t matter much for me so I just kept it disabled. Since I fully recovered my iPhone the “Other” didn’t grow anymore - it remained low (a few gb).

Guys you can’t believe but I think I find a solution!!

I connected my iPhone to iTunes to backup my iPhone and restore from it, but it didn’t work because there’s not enough place on the iPhone.

suddenly I entered to my iPhone storage and the ‘other’ storage start to decrease and keep falling.

I hope it will not return and just in case I disable my iCloud Drive and will backup only on the computer with iTunes.

Well, if you tried everything, then clearly the problem is yours forever.

However, you might consider backing up your phone, then restoring the backup.

All these fixes don't seem to change my "other" storage using 57gb. I upgraded from iPhone xs with 512gb space (using only 57gb of that) to iPhone 12 pro max with 128gb of space.

backed up to iTunes and Reset to factory doesn't change the other storage usage. I am running 14.3. When I go to Settings>>General>>iPhone storage, I can see my "other" storage going up in size.

Based on this thread and others in the apple developer forum, this issue has been going on for a long time with no real fix.

My xs was running 14.2 and did not have this issue.

I have the same problem as well. I believe the issue is iCloud drive which keeps trying to sync all the files on iCloud, share by my Mac onto the phone. In fact, when I switched off the iCloud drive from settings I had loads of space available, after waiting a while. The problem is that I really need iCloud drive, it has become a fundamental part of my workflow. Why can't apple developers set a limit to how much data is downloaded on the phone according to the device's capacity? There is the same issue with Photos.

I literally have the same exact problem! Except, after the iOS 13.0 update, this used storage switched from “other” into my photos? Granted, I have a lot of photos, but over 426GB worth? I don’t think so. This number also has no correspondence with me taking photos at all - no matter how many I take or delete! It’s like whatever was in my “other” storage, is hiding in my photos.

I contacted Apple before, and spoke to a senior manager because they were so concerned about this. Although, they didn’t do much unfortunately, he just said that it was my iPhone sorting itself out. I’m backing it up again, but to the 2TB paid iCloud this time - in the hope that factory resetting it will do the trick.. Fingers crossed more than ever..

For reference, my phone is a 512GB iPhone 11 Pro Max, and only started mucking up after its year’s warranty had ran out.. It was stuck in a forced reset mode, to which the agents in the apple store told me just to wipe it - I don’t think so. Thankfully, it came back on! I then spoke to an Apple agent over the iPhone who was much more understanding and sympathetic. I got it working again, but it started playing up again.. I have deleted thousands, (yes, thousands), of photos/videos and there was no change in my storage - even apps! Nothing worked. My storage between apps, especially photos, fluctuates in no specific pattern - but, the app icons do disappear around 511.7GB. The scary part is that Apple, or every agent that I spoke to in the shop, said that there is no coming back from the “forced restart” that the iPhone puts itself into - and that the only resolution is to wipe it, or pay over around a thousand pounds to have someone extracts the iPhone’s data.

I am not backing up, and am going to reset the phone to factory settings, in the hope that this will fix the obvious software problem on my phone. This was the same with my partner’s phone, but his was not as severe as mine (exact same phone and GB storage). Even updating to iOS14.4 didn’t do anything :(..

I completely agree with you, I really don’t understand why Apple is blind to this issue!

Slightly good news, I got some of my storage back. I haven’t reset the phone to factory settings as of yet, nor did I delete a large number of photos/videos.

I actually deleted one game (not sure if this is connected), but it was taking up around 13GB - ‘Chapters’. After deleting this, I used the extra space that it created to download google photos and one drive. Google photos may be good for people with a selectable about of photos, I had too many to select. Although, I found that one drive helped massively.

Again, I’m not sure if the two are connected, so definitely don’t take my word for it! But, I started an automatic upload of my photos to the one drive - I upgraded to premium just in case too (it was free for a month). It would seem that once something started to upload my photos for what they were, it stripped them of the extra storage that they were taking up, and my photos could no longer disguise their true storage?

Okay, so I have over 132,000 photos/items in my camera roll. Yes, I know that this is huge! But, even the Apple agent that I mentioned helping me before, said that this would not amount to over the 462GB that my phone had claimed that it was. My sister in law, with 10,000 media (around 3,000 videos) had 2.3GB of photos.. So, putting this in perspective, why do I not have 30.36GB worth of photos? Also, the 10,000 of my photos that uploaded to one drive, only took up around 200-300MB of storage - which is unbelievable. After all of this, my overall storage went down to around 444GB, and is slowly decreasing - and my photos went down to around 406GB?

Getting to the point, I used one drive and it would appear that it uploaded my photos for what they were - so I would definitely recommend this to see if it works, if you can get those few hundred MB of data for the app! It works with a normal email, mine’s outlook - and I know that type of mail works.

Good luck to everyone who has this potable me, I wish they would just fix this!

It has been resolved, and the solution is posted in the very forum thread you posted to. Just read the thread.