Reminders app hogging memory

Hi pexi72,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're having an issue with the Reminders app using more memory than you'd expect. We'd like to help.

Which iOS are you currently running? If you haven't updated to the most recent, creating a backup and updating can help your storage recalculate: Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Then, if you're still having issues, connecting to a computer to see if the storage is the same as on the iPhone. These steps can help you through that: How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Hope that helps!

Take care!

i found i made the mistake of adding an image to the reminders - apple for some silly reason uses full quality high res - the image was 27MB, replicated across several reminders this became 10+GB of stuff i didnt need.

try to follow this guide Delete reminders on Mac – Apple Support (UK)

only icloud syncs the data back..... im hoping to free up data soon!

I have been battling with this issue the last 4 weeks.

devices:

• iPhone 13 pro
• Apple Watch s4
• MacBook Pro m1
• ipad pro 2020

For the watch this might help:

• delete all reminders and reminders app from the phone
• delete all reminders on other devices connected to icloud
• power off all other devices
• setup watch as new from iphone

this is the only resolution so far for the watch I haven’t had storage notification full yet.

on my phone it’s a different situation - I can now see reminders using approx 10gb

ios devices syncing reminders now

reminders not syncing to watch

macbook not syncing reminders in icloud

very annoying

I finally solved this! my phone and iPad both had over 14 GB being used. The problem was traced to the Reminders in my library on my mac. I had once attached a picture with a reminder of my eyedrops. Somehow it kept replicating itself until there were hundreds (700 +) copies of the attachment at about 16 mb each. Deleted them disconnected from icloud. Deleted reminders app from Phone and ipad. Shut down all devices. Waited 10 minutes and fixed! From this webpage https://appletoolbox.com/fix-apple-watch-says-storage-is-full-but-its-not/

1. On your Mac, open the Reminders App database. It should be located under Mac\UserName\Library folder\Reminders.

I finally solved this! At least for me. My phone and iPad both had over 14 GB being used. The problem was traced to the Reminders in my library on my mac. I had once attached a picture with a reminder of my eyedrops. Somehow it kept replicating itself until there were hundreds (700 +) copies of the attachment at about 16 mb each. Deleted them disconnected from icloud. Deleted reminders app from Phone and ipad. Shut down all devices. Waited 10 minutes and fixed! From this webpage https://appletoolbox.com/fix-apple-watch-says-storage-is-full-but-its-not/

1. On your Mac, open the Reminders App database. It should be located under Mac\UserName\Library folder\Reminders.

Having done the above. Then after deleting all backups of iOS devices and resetting said devices. I deleted all backups on iCloud and my Mac always contained the extra 14gigs. No problems now (except pain of setting up iOS devices from scratch of course). I had decided to delete the files from the backups themselvesI found them and deleted them. But I could not successfully restore my device from that backup.

Yes, and I already fixed mine. Woot Woot! Here's how I did it.

1. Made sure all my devices are connected to iCloud (MacBook, Ipad, iPhone, Watch)
2. Make sure all Reminders are synced- especially on the MacBook. After making sure the MacBook has all the current reminders, I disconnected my iPhone and Ipad from iCloud and uninstalled the Reminders app. Turned off for 10mins.
3. On my MacBook, I accessed the Reminders Library (as mentioned above) and deleted the all folders where all duplicated reminders are located.
4. After deleting the folder with the duplicates I restarted my MacBook, and then checked if all reminders are still intact.
5. On this step, I initially tried turning iPad and iPhone after 10mins, installed the Reminders app, and waiting for it to sync. However, the issues still persisted and I decided to disconnect them again from iCloud, and opted to Reset both iPad and iPhone.
6. After the reset, give everything time to sync and then the issue is Fixed!

Note: It is very important that you keep one device, preferable a Mac that stores all important reminders. ALSO VERY IMPORTANT to DISCONNECT any devices from iCloud before initiating the reset.

I did as well delete all of the repeating files in the Mac library folder for Reminders as was suggested. (My iPad was out of memory and the Reminders app reported 19.72GB !) This tipped me off of the problem.

Even after deleting the Mac files and Reminders app:

• iPad still reported 19.72GB
• iPad storage still reported 19.72GB used, however, total memory was reduced so the iPad was not out of memory now
• An anomaly appears to be where the reported memory is an error...

The same problem here. I already started an official case on Apple Support (number: 101685684596). Will follow this to the end. There are some users that proposed some solutions that seem to work for them, but they are too much time consuming and I am not sure whether this solution will finally work for me.

This is definitely related to images added to an event in reminders that when you snooze it and the event snooze it self and "recreate" it self to the new time when it has to appear it make a new copy of the image and so on. I found hundreds of copies of the SAME image in the reminders database, but in different folders with different names.

You can see that all my Apple Products are with a huge chunk of space used by reminders. The Mac Book pro only use 4.5gb because I manually deleted 10gb of images from the reminder database (this was the advice of the Apple support staff), but that deletion did not sync to the rest of the Apple Ecosystem.

Tomorrow, I'll contact Apple Support again .

Yeap. It is very strange. Though, it seems not to be only a problem of the reported memory. In the case of my Apple Watch 5, it appeared a message that it was running out of memory even after applying the solution proposed by Macnag. In the case of the iPhone it was using 16,55gb (see the pictures) before the solution proposed by Macnag, now it said that it is using 25,92 Gb 😩

Tomorrow (weekday) I'll contact Apple support again.

Hey,

I have same issue. I think it was happened after last update (15.0.2) or maybe right after update ios15. I’m not sure.

Anyway, iPhone (7) Storage shows me reminders - data and documents (5.55 GB). The total occupied storage of the iPhone is 22 GB, but after connecting the iPhone to the Mac, it shows 24.5 GB

iPad Pro - reminders 4.05 GB

Apple Watch Series 3 - reminders - 3.99 GB

I deleted everything in reminders app…

I've already canceled sync of reminders with the cloud and deleted all reminders data (it was around 3.7 GB)…

I have already tried reset my phone and then restore from backup… but nothing worked

I also checked icloud on web and reminders doesn’t work there (Perhaps it is because of unsychronization, don’t know)

Do you have some tips how figure out this issue? It is really annoying and main problem is my watch… I can’t use it properly

because of full storage

You can delete reminders app but not that massive data. I have the same junk with phone 2,91GB, watch 2,88GB and pad 1,2GB. I can clean all in app, the put a list and reminders which will appear under icloud with max some hundreds of kB. Backups bring that junk all included. Icloud.com not showing anything than what I make new reminders now. Settings reset dont help. Big fear is that while ios 13 came, osx reminders got messed. Then mac has managed to sync some set via cloud as solid bed rock to all devices now. Maybe wrong, maybe its ios 15 pointers gone crazy. Anyhow days lost to this misery. Icloud backups get so big that without extra space bought no go. Luckily all devices have space available still to go but couldnt ever think of landing to such after years and years with A devices house full. Thought windows is a total mess with all different hw combos but now I am more than happy to have a pc for work. I read some getting their watches full with this so is not to laugh anymore. Was all too good so may years just updating and transferring data to new devices. Cant recommend anyone anymore these if the result is start from scratch with each device. Maybe this glitch was there even before ios15 but that update made me check how crazy the memory usage gauge goes. It didn’t calculate wrong but xxxx reminders data took pole position as the biggest and greatest on all devices except mac where its now off the icloud, and stays. Moment I can wait for some rescue before stupid time consuming from clean table setting up begins.

I have the same problem. On my iPhone Reminders is taking 11.5MB but on my iPad it is taking 8.14GB. Both devices have Reminders synced via iCloud.

I only have 12 reminders and I've deleted all completed Reminders.

Seems no solution yet. Local Apple Senior Advisor voted this issue, was also known by Apple, all logs etc was uploaded. Definitely frustrating. Meanwhile loaded all calendars, reminders, icloud drive and others data from privacy.apple.com but there is no such gigabytes or items to find. Have been transferring all data from icloud to others like onedrive etc as this kinda behaviour and feedback times ruined my trust to this ecosystem. Only health data with watch keep me using whole icloud and apples for the moment.

My reminders app on 11pro Max took 10gb og memory. I thought it was caused by my daily reminder with pictures so I decided to delete all (including the completed) both on my iphone and on icloud.com.

i reset my iphone, uninstalled the reminders app still experiencing it now!

my apple watch 4 is impacted because it keeps on saying “memory full”!

Same issue. 9gb of space taken. Just switched phones a week ago from an iPhone 12 pro to a iPhone 13 pro. Erased the reminders app and stopped backing up reminders to the cloud. Two days later the reminder app showed up in my iPhone storage taking up 9gb again. Don’t understand how it just magically appeared after removing everything from my old phone.