Voice memos is taking up 13 GB even if I permanently deleted all the recordings and the app.

Hi,

Makes sense.

You would need to reinstall iOS; due to the original issue being associated to the software currently installed. Standard update would not resolve the issue when iOS itself needs to be removed the device.

With placing in recovery mode and reinstalling iOS on a Mac/PC, the issue should resolve itself.

hope this helps.

Hi k_p95 - thank you for informing us of the update and helping us all work through this issue!!

Unfortunately, the same goes for me - I upgraded to iOS 15.6 and the issue remains with 52 TB of voice memos reported in settings (after waiting two hours for that screen to load). This persists after multiple restarts. Backups are still not working either.

When I was still on 15.5, I did try an iCloud-based transfer to the other iPhone. I let them both sit for over 28 hours, both connected to power with the screen on, and they never left the screen saying it was transferring the data. My router reported that apart from a few MB at the very beginning, they only ever transmitted a few KB sporadically here and there - definitely no indication that it ever started transferring the minimum 13 GB of photos that I would expect to have been uploaded. I will try this again now that I've upgraded both devices to 15.6. However, I'm not holding my breath, given that backups are still not working on the new version.

I am hopeful that 15.6 will prevent other users from ending up with this crazy and difficult issue. However, even according to the language in the release notes - "Fixes an issue where Settings may continue to display that device storage is full even if it is available" - I am the third report in this thread which indicates the fix has not worked for us, at least under the assumption that the word "continue" implies it was supposed to catch and fix devices already presenting with the issue.

Even in the case the language was misleading and this fix was only intended to prevent future occurrences, I do not consider the overall issue to be fixed by the update if it requires resetting the device in order to remove the issue, since the entire issue is that backups and transferring are both prohibited by the issue. This means all the people in this thread are still left stranded with data that they cannot extract from their phones without deleting it.

I am confident that a future update could actually fix the issue, given that we know Voice Memos itself is accurately reporting the correct size of individual memos. I will not reset my device until such an update is available.

If you are in contact with Apple in regards to this, please do not report the issue as fully fixed until the users in this thread have the ability to back up their data prior to resetting. Thank you once again for all your assistance - I appreciate it!!

So here's the deal, I have found a fix and I hope it works for all experiencing this awful bullshit issue that apple can't seem to fix. I updated to 15.6, and the 447 GB of ghost storage and greyed out voice memo icon still appeared. I decided to try a "reset all settings", and like magic, everything is back to normal again! Try it and I bet it works - don't erase all data, only "reset all settings"

transfer or reset iPhone>reset>reset all settings

let me know if it works for you as it did for me!

I got this problem fixed by deleting the app and then going to settings and delete it again (still my phone would say it is occupying a lot of space). After that, reset all settings on your iPhone, which will restart it. This option does not delete anything in your phone, just restarts the setting like WiFi, apple wallet cards, lock screen pictures and your keyboard. This made Voice memos disappear from the top of the list. It didn't free any space in my phone but it won't show up as occupying 400 GB.

I’m having similar issues my voice memo app says it’s taking up 657GB.

That’s Giga not mega bites! How is that even possible when my phone only has 64GB of total storage???

I’ve tried all the suggestions I could find and it’s still “broken”. How can I fix this without deleting and restoring my entire phone?

Hi @k_p95, you mentioned that before reinstalling iOS, we'd need to create a backup to iCloud. The problem is (for me and many others I am finding) that backups are IMPOSSIBLE while this issue is happening. I have tried backups using iCloud, iTunes, Finder (on my Mac and MacBookPro), via wifi AND cable, yet every time the backup attempts fail after hours of messages like "Waiting for data transfer" and spinning animated icons.

So I cannot create a backup at all on my iPhone Xs and this is where we hit a brick wall when it comes to reinstalling iOS or otherwise attempting to salvage data from an iPhone suffering from this issue.

My VoiceMemo app is showing that it is taking up 12.31 TB (yes, terabytes!) of space... and this is on a 256GB iPhone Xs, so clearly this is some nasty software bug.

After all the headaches and literally hours I've spent with Apple (in-store and on the phone with support cases), I was still unable to create any backup and therefore unable to restore my new iPhone 13Pro "from a backup".

I was able to rescue all of my photos by syncing those to iCloud, but nearly two years worth of text messages (and all pics+vids associated with them) are missing in my iPhone 13Pro... partially my fault for not creating full backups on my Mac for the past two years. Clearly this bug originated between my last successful backup and today.

Today, I tried to both DELETE and OFFLOAD the VoiceMemo app data from my iPhone Xs. During the approximately two hours of each attempt, the phone gets extremely slow-to-respond, heats up, then kicks me out only to leave me where I was before . Frustrating beyond anything!!

Anything else I can try to get rid of the "12.31 TB" of Documents & Data in the VoiceMemo app??

Appreciate it if anyone else has more ideas!

I have 1000+ voice memo files, but only 50GB free space. I dont find the voice memos logo in iCloud, did you? If so how? Can space be why they dont back up? Sync to Mac only show 50/1000 files.

please help, important media files.

I too have been facing the same problem. Voice memo is 268gb even though the maximum soace in my iphone is 64gb. My all software updates are up to date. Please help

I have the same thing, what is going on here. 21GB used. :( Is this real?

I have the same problem and it seems that Apple does not have proper solution… 8Gb of Voice memos in documents in data - but have no even one voice memo…

Same issue but mine is way more storage more than my phone even has. I literally don’t know why it would be saying this. Just thought someone would be curious

This is happening to me too. To help, I upgraded all my Apple devices with the latest operating systems and this doesn't help.

I’m having the same issue! my memos takes up 72 GB of space and I only have 64 GB of storage total.

Same issue

Same issue