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

Go to Settings/General/iPhone Storage and post a screen shot of the top of the display.

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.

I’m running IOS 14 and having the same issue still. Just restored my phone after deleting 20+ gigs. Then backed up, erased all content and settings, and restored.

still same issue just a few hours later

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.

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.

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.

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?

Ok, I looked more into my issue with photos and videos storage and the iPhone storage seems 'corrupted'

I checked the storage taken by Photos and it's shown on:

iPhone - 414gb

iCloud - 374gb

Macbook - 373 gb*

*I connected my iPhone to my Macbook to check the size of Photos & Videos on the iPhone and it shows 367gb but without including hidden folder 6gb

So Photos shown on iCloud (374gb) and also shown on my Macbook (373gb) is different than the one appearing on the iPhone (414gb).

Could be that the Shared Albums on iPhone take extra space? Even though these Photos & Videos are shared by me and all these already exist in the main Photos album? Meaning that same Photos & Videos take double space (even though they do exist on iCloud sharing)

Shared Albums contain 3848 photos and 1117 videos but I can't verify their size. I try to check on the Macbook but it simply remains: 'Calculating size..."

It's too obvious that there is a problem here!

I am surprised that Apple doesn't address this issue when so many people have same problem.

gabzhd do you also have Shared Albums?

Just to add: I did erase completely my iPhone about a month ago for the storage issue but even after full recovery from iCloud backup, I still have the SAME problem - the Photos on iPhone occupy more space than they should!

Photos & Videos on iCloud - 374gb

Photos & Videos shown by Macbook - 367gb

Hidden folder shown by Macbook - 6gb

Photos & Videos shown on iPhone - 414gb

I have this same issue! Someone please help..

Me too🙄

I have the same problem. Any suggestions Apple??

Yep. Sounds like my story as well. Super annoying!

I have this same problem. Has anyone found a solution

I’m using 13.6.1 and it’s happening again after I did a factory reset a few weeks ago. I really hope Apple fixes this. Going to try and download 13.7 and see if that helps after I offload some apps.

It’s actually not fixed, still happening to my phone after the latest 13.7 update. So frustrating.