“Apps” Storage in iPad disproportionally too large?

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“Apps” Storage in iPad disproportionally too large?

According to my iPad Storage in Settings, all the apps are taking up about 16 GB.

However, I really don’t have that many apps. The few that I have are large, but it shouldn’t add up to 16… So, I manually added up all the individual apps in Storage and it comes out to only around 5GB…

I was wondering if Storage is taking something else into account when calculating storage usage by apps? Prior to this, it’s like no matter how many apps I delete, the numbers won’t go down.

iPad, iPadOS 14

Posted on Sep 12, 2021 6:07 PM

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Answer 1

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dtrinh99 Author

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Sep 17, 2021 10:19 AM in response to dtrinh99

I ended up backing up my iPad, did a factory reset, and restore it. It worked! Now it's only taking up 13.3 GB of 32 GB :))

This is good feedback for Apple though, this "dead space" must have accumulated after 4 years of use.

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Answer 2

Sep 13, 2021 12:20 PM in response to dtrinh99

Hi dtrinh99,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities. We understand that you are running out of internal storage on your iPad and we'd like to help.

First, make sure to follow all of the steps here to help free up space: How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

With regards to the amount of data on your iPad, have you saved any media from these apps, like audio or video files? If so, are you able to delete these items, then check if the storage amount changes?

We hope this helps.

Cheers!

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Answer 3

dtrinh99 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 17, 2021 2:18 AM in response to barberlives123

Hi barber!

I checked the iPad storage on my Macbook as instructed in that link. However, there are some discrepancies with numbers on my laptop than in the iPad's storage info. It seems like Docs & Data takes up 19.19 GB. However, I added up the Docs & Data from each app under iPad Storage and it comes out to only about 2.6 GB. Those are important files, can't really delete them now. Is there another source of Docs & Data I can check?

Furthermore, I don't have any apps that store media. The only app I can think of is Google Drive with all my files and documents, but most of it should be in the cloud and it only takes up 499.8 MB (App Size 207 MB, Docs & Data 293.8 MB). The app that's taking the most space is Procreate with its drawing files, but that's right below 1 GB.

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“Apps” Storage in iPad disproportionally too large?

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