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

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.

Either I am not explaining myself well or else Apple is throwing an exceptional opportunity out of the window. iCloud is awesome in syncing data between the device and the cloud. If the data I had were limited to just the data I have on the phone, there would not be an issue. Most of us however have data on the phone and on the Mac. iCloud is great because I can access my whole file system on the Mac through my phone.

Now if my phone had 2TB in capacity, that would not be a problem, but of course, my phone's capacity is just 32GB, my Mac's capacity is 1TB and my iCloud subscription's capacity is 2TB. In my view, there is a very simple solution. iCloud drive checks which device it is on and limits the amount of data it syncs according to that device's capacity, and downloads onto the device just the latest 2GB of data used, say or whichever file I try to access then. As you are saying, in order to use iCloud drive I need to throw out all the data on my Mac and limit it to just 32GB and just use 32GB of my 2TB iCloud storage space available, barely makes sense does it?

I have in fact switched off iCloud on my phone, that was the only way to 'solve' the problem, but I am throwing out the awesome features of iCloud and have greatly debilitated my workflow.

On the phone you can selectively choose what to sync from iCloud. If you are syncing your user directory on your Mac to iCloud you probably don’t want that on your phone, so you can just turn off iCloud Drive in Settings/[your name]/iCloud and that content will not be synced to your phone. And turn off any other items that you don’t need on the phone.

I need to be able to access it all, I just don't need it all on the phone at the same time, hence my simple suggestion above. This is how it used to be up to some time ago, I had no issues whatsoever, then after some update, it changed and started filling up my phone. My guess is that Apple stopped supporting iCloud drive for lower capacity phones.

You cannot save something to iCloud and remove it from your phone, agreed, never did that, don't want that. I just want iCloud drive to stop filling up my phone. It didn't use to do that, now it does.

You probably added something to iCloud from your Mac, and now that is being synced to the iPhone. It didn’t used to do it because you only recently added stuff to iCloud from your Mac. EVERYTHING in iCloud will sync to your iPhone unless you turn off sync for specific items. There has never been a time when not all iCloud content synced to your iPhone. So if more is syncing to iPhone then there is more data in iCloud than there was.

Dear Mr. Finch, no I did not, if anything I removed stuff from the Mac. I used to have more data on the Mac before, way more than my iPhone capacity but it never filled the storage. There is one thing which when I change solves or makes the problem return, I have tried it countless times. It is the toggle to start using iCloud drive on the iPhone, when I switch it on, it fills my storage within two days, when I switch it off, my phone has loads of storage to use. I appreciate your trying to help, but you don't seem to have the solution to my problem. You don't need to solve everyone's problems, don't worry. Thanks for your time.

I had the EXACT same issue with my iphone 11 pro 512gb (iOS 14.3)

I was deleting MANY apps and videos but useless... the storage used reached 511.2gb out of 512gb.

Then the iphone started reseting by itself and got frozen.

Tried forced reset, tried iOS reinstallation through mac - didn't work.

Guided by Apple Support I was suggested to erase and reset the iphone completely (this involved erasing 450-500gb data and recovering it from the iCloud backup).

Then, guess what ... my iphone recovery from the iCloud backup doesn't work. It recovers about 100gb and then sudenly drops back to 90gb. Then it tries to recover more data but again drops - for over 12hours it repeats doing this.

Now I need to simply reset AGAIN the iphone and have the hope that the icloud backup MIGHT work this time...

I don't know if it's a coincidence but recently I started to backup also files from my new macbook into the icloud.

I DID check how much space does icloud drive take into my iphone but it was indicating only 5gb. Therefore this shouldn't really affect my storage issue on the iphone, UNLESS it's an error from Apple by which it 'flies' data into that OTHER section without showing that actually over there are files from/related to icloud drive

PS. Lawrence Finch your 'support' doesn't help AT ALL. It rather makes people more annoyed seeing your useless 'solution' being posted over and over.

I have the same issue.. it has been going on for a couple of months now.. i would get notified that my storage is full but i am sure i should have up to 2gb to spare.. the only recent addition to the list of installed apps is a mere estimated 200mb.. so i would hit the files and delete some photos and videos and apps from time to time but just a few moments later i get the full storage notification again and now it appears to be more full than ever.. first time i had the prompt, it said i have only less than 50 mb to spare.. so i cleared and deleted so apps and did gain a few more space, but a few minutes i was notifie that i have literally zero mb to spare.... like what was that supposed to mean? What did i do to fill up those cleared up memory again? Nothing.. does someone have an explanation?

Peenice wrote:

I have the same issue.. it has been going on for a couple of months now.. i would get notified that my storage is full but i am sure i should have up to 2gb to spare.. the only recent addition to the list of installed apps is a mere estimated 200mb.. so i would hit the files and delete some photos and videos and apps from time to time but just a few moments later i get the full storage notification again and now it appears to be more full than ever.. first time i had the prompt, it said i have only less than 50 mb to spare.. so i cleared and deleted so apps and did gain a few more space, but a few minutes i was notifie that i have literally zero mb to spare.... like what was that supposed to mean? What did i do to fill up those cleared up memory again? Nothing.. does someone have an explanation?

If Other keeps growing it is a problem with storage corruption. The solution is to back up the phone, then restore it from the backup you just made.

I have the same issue on iPhone 7 (14.3.) 32 GB, my storage is now over 20 GB and renders it impossible to use, I tried multiple restoring, DFU restore, deleting everything from the iPhone, it does anyway, I now have new one on it´s way and I´m afraid to log in using my current ID as to not spread the data corruption that probably occurs in my current phone. iTunes shows about 8 GB of free space tho.

Can someone tell me if it´s save to use my ID, or if it´s better to create a new one?

Also would appreciate if someone could give me a solution for the iP 7 as it could be used by a relative, but I don´t want to give them buggy phone. Would giving it to a service center work? Can they wipe it somehow, better?

Thanks all,

Best regards

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!

That was my initial response too! My my only issue was that, even after I deleted thousands of media - photos and videos included - my photo storage didn’t change at all! Even taking photos didn’t change it.

Of course the 30.36GB I mentioned would be in no way accurate - I was just estimating how much storage my photos would take up if they were on my sister-in-law’s phone? This makes completely no sense because a photo is a photo, it should be stored as the same about of MB or so on, yes?

But, she had over 10,000 photos, with 3,000 of them being videos - and yet, only 2.3GB of photo storage was shown in her settings? Yet, my partner 6,100 photos with only 1,600 of them being videos and this takes up 88GB?

Before putting it through the one drive, I could take no photos or anything that would contribute to the photos app and the photos section in ‘iPhone Storage’ would increase until my phone was blocked from running efficiently.

My point is that, despite the little differences in the media that each of our phones have, there doesn’t seem to a particular correlation between all of our photos (they all have similar photos to video ratio), and what our phones tell us that we have? Both my partner and I have the iPhone 11 Pro Max, and his sister has the iPhone SX Max?

I would love to know how this shows up for other people? It sounds stupid, but my phone literally jumped from around 158GB-178GB out of the 512GB, to full.. overnight. That’s my issue with it. I’ve got too many photos, I know - I just need to delete the mass of it. It’s just the inconsistency across the other devices in my household that make me speculate. If that makes sense?

Does your sister-in-law have Optimize Photos enabled on the phone? That saves lower resolution versions of the photos.

Deleted photos don’t go away immediately; they move to the Recently Deleted album. If you delete them from there that should free up space, but sometimes they get moved to Other as a catch-all for storage corruption. If that is the problem you need to back up the phone, restore it to factory settings, then restore the backup. This removes storage corruption.