Every day the iPhone 12 storage grey System and Grey Other bar increase

You really should take a step back and relax. I'm going to tell you again, but will probably fall on deaf ears.. I'm not being impolite or angry just because you don't like what I have to say.

You say that you've 'spent months' reading about other storage on 'endless forums'..

Yet you have not picked up on the fact that 5-10 GB of other storage is perfectly normal?

You can ask what it is until you're blue in the face, you're not going to get a definitive answer unless maybe you go get a software engineering job at Apple. Then you can come back here and tell us what this is made up of.

You've compared your situation with others saying 'clearly other people are having the same [issue]', but you are in a completely different ball park. TonyCollinet and I are on this site regularly helping people with their iPhone issues. People that come here with legit other storage issues, it takes up half their phone. Often times it seems like it has to do with iCloud.

You've posted several screenshots of your other storage, I can quickly and easily measure with a scale and approximate that your other storage is below 5 GB. So as you've been told, there is nothing wrong. Your phone is acting normal.

You might find my comment of you obsessing over this offensive.. it's not my intent, but it is what you're doing. Have you actually tried to simply enjoy your phone rather than account for every 0.2 GB your storage number changes by? I have my doubts because you've also posted that you 'want to scream' after a slight increase in storage.. Just because you can't account for each MB of it. You 'don't have any apps', you delete all your videos and pictures.. Why???

You think your phone is going to sink with a slow leak.. Why? Has it happened to you before? Or just cause you read it's happened to others?

If I'm wrong about you obsessing about it, then prove it. Don't look at your storage capacity for 1 month and just use/enjoy your phone. Can you do it?

I've owned various iPhone models for about 10 years now. It has been years since I've restored my phone because of any storage issues.

Since you started posting, I actually started checking my other storage as well. I don't really care what it does until it gets crazy..

Well of course every time you post it would remind me and I'd check my storage again.

MY storage was being a bit unruly. It had climbed up to ~16 GB. So I was kind of chuckling to myself that I was telling someone else not to worry about other storage while mine was elevated. So I monitored it since my initial response to you (just over a week ago) and it's been plateaued the whole time. 15-16 GB the entire last week. It has not continued to climb. No slow leak, no sinking ship.

One thing that I did discover, I compared my iPad storage to my iPhone storage and noticed that the Pocket Earth app was not listed on my iPhone near the top of the storage consumers. But I KNOW that it should be because I always download an offline map of the USA that's around 8 GB in size just in case I need it. So I opened the app and verified that the offline map was still on my phone.. it was. I then went back to iPhone storage and gave it a minute.. what do you know? my other storage dropped down to 7.25 GB (which is now perfectly normal).

So who knows what the reason behind the misrepresentation was.. The app hadn't been opened for awhile and iOS didn't know how to classify the data? The app is supposed to report what the data is and didn't? The app had a glitch? iOS had a glitch? I'll never know. And that was just one app that I got lucky and noticed something seemed off. Had I not figured this out by mere curiosity, my phone still would have been just fine. Are there other apps doing the same thing out of the ~300+ I have on my phone.. more than likely.

If you scroll all the way down in the storage menu, you'll see two sections. 'System' and 'Other'.

'System' is the size of the entire current iOS that is on your device. This will change and fluctuate every time you update your OS, 'Others' is all the system files that are linked and created by the OS itself. This will also change. One day this may be 10GB large (after updating for example because the system creates all sorts of temporary files while re-indexing) while on other days going down to only 3GB or even less depending on what device you are using and what version of iOS is running. Don't worry, those files will not get bigger and bigger and eat up all your space. And regarding the Health App, the 11MB is the app itself and not any sort of additional stored data. You're all good!

If you are still in the 90 day window you could always call Apple as well. You have 90 days of complimentary support. Maybe you will get a better response than what I did.

I'm not sure why you are concerned about this.. you're using less than 20% of your available storage.

Other storage can vary for sure, this is normal and should be expected. Probably normal to be anywhere from 0 to 10 gb.

What is "Other" and What Can I Do About I… - Apple Community

Most people that have concerns about 'other' storage is when it's takes up more than 10 or 20 gb.

So I think you are worrying about nothing. Your phone seems normal to me.

I had a massive issue with "other" rendering my iPhone 8 useless after iOS 14. Switched to a new iPhone 11 middle of November. Started the phone fresh and rebuilt as new and still have this "other" issue. Have also been on the phone with Apple Support for multiple calls, diagnostics, profiling.... after almost two months THEY STILL have no explanation, resolution or solution to this. They actually haven't even called me back or reached out to me in weeks other than an EMail tonight asking if I want them to "close" my case. Close the case that hasn't even been resolved.

So that's where I am at with "other." I have troubleshooted the old phone until I was blue in the face and finally upgraded. Other just continuously grows and their only response is to factory reset. Which I find unreasonable for a brand new phone. That's my opinion though.

There is likely no answer you'll get here that will satisfy you..

I've already told you that the Other category will vary.

You've been provided with a link that discusses what Other storage contains.

You were concerned about the Health app taking up 11 MB of your 128 GB

You said you don't use YouTube because of the app size (which is only ~200 MB).

You are using less than a fifth of your storage space.

You are obsessing over your storage numbers.

You could contact Apple if you want to dig into Other storage further? Get Support

Or my response will pull your thread to the front of the list again and maybe another user will chime in

I don't think it's rude or impolite to want to know what is using your storage. I bought a phone with "X" amount of storage so I could use that storage for my use. I am intelligent enough to understand that the system will take a chunk of that space as well. But everyone seems to "list" what other contains and when I have asked Apple they don't really tell me. They have also said iOS "maintains" that number and should flush itself out when running low on space. This has never been the case for me. As I said, I noticed this issue right after iOS 14. Never had the issue prior.

I also have friends whose "other" seems to fluctuate as they claim. Going high in numbers down to as low as 2 or 3 GBs. Other friends have the same issue as what I do. Mine continuously just grows and NEVER actually fluctuates. Call it an obsession. But I am a funeral director who takes call at night. On my iPhone 8 once that "other" clogged my entire storage I couldn't receive phone calls or use any apps.

I don't believe having to factory reset the phone every so often is a viable or reasonable solution. Especially from Apple.

Why do you think it is not right? You phone operating system needs to use storage to operate. This is shown in the Other catagory. It will go up and down.

You have plenty of space available on the phone, and you've been told it will not continue getting larger until it uses all the space.

This is how phones work. You'll see similar behaviour also on android. or any other computer or operating system.

Stop worrying about it. You are allowing this to destroy your enjoyment of the phone. Use the phone how you like, and as long as it is not full, forget about the storage.

IGNORE IT

It is not a problem. You have plenty of space. Put back the apps you have removed. Enjoy using them. You don't need to remove them

YOU HAVE PLENTY OF SPACE.

Enjoy your phone. Use it. Do what you like with it. STOP LOOKING AT THE STORAGE - LOOKING IS THE ONLY PROBLEM YOU HAVE.

Come back if you ever run out of space, and we will help you.

Sorry for shouting.