Push Notifications Suddenly Using Tons of Cellular Data
I have an iPhone XR, iOS 14.7. Starting around mid-June this year I noticed that my cellular usage was abnormally high. Typically my cellular usage is less than 1 GB per month. I know, because I am enrolled in T-Mobile's KickBack program, which gives me a $10 discount on my monthly bill if I use less than 2 GB of data. I received a text from T-Mobile in mid-June stating that I had use 95% of the 2 GB limit for their KickBack program. This was surprising to me because I usually go the whole month and never even come close to the limit. When I checked out Settings-> Cellular to find the culprit, it turned out to be System Services. When I selected System Services, two categories in particular were using a ton of cellular data: Push Notifications and iCloud.
I went through my Cellular settings to see how I could reduce cellular usage, but wasn't able to find anything useful. I turned off Push Notifications on Mail, Slack, Facebook, LinkedIn, as many apps as I could think of. I also turned off Background App Refresh for basically every app. I am only a few days into my billing cycle and Push Notifications has consumed 148 MB of Cellular Data and iCloud has consumed 106 MB. Is there any way to reduce the cellular usage of these categories? I literally never encountered this issue before June 2021. I have been working from home for well over a year now and am almost always on my home wi-fi network. I use wi-fi when I am at the gym and any stores that have it available. So I'm only using cellular data when I'm driving somewhere (which I don't do much) or taking a walk. I'm almost certain that this is due to a recent iOS update and would like to know how I can fix it. Any helpful tips are appreciated. Thanks!
iPhone XR, iOS 14