iPhone storage issues after 15.4 update

I was able to fix the issue and it has stayed fixed ever since.

I noticed many apps like Podcasts, Spotify, Music and Photos were using a ton of storage but of course System Data was out of control.

I decided to delete those apps completely and reinstall them except for photos where I made sure I had uploaded all of them to be cloud then deleted all the photos.

When doing that, I did a force full restart following the 15.5 update and now for the last couple weeks it’s back to normal.

I think something was causing the system data issue within those apps using a ton of storage. I am monitoring it constantly for now.

I am using 45G out of the 250G and system storage is the 2nd highest still but behind apps but much smaller than before

Good news- it seems that the IOS 15.6 update resolves the problem. I deleted some stuff to have enough room to install. When i downloaded and installed the problem was resolved- i had another 80 G immediately released.

Ok. MAYBE I fixed this issue. Not sure. I looked through storage again and system data was at 95PG and of the 250 I have 214 were being used. What I noticed was that at the top of that list outside of System Data was Podcasts. I noticed this was unusually high at over 22GB.

I do subscribe to about 8-10 of them so I decided to delete the app completely and then reinstall it.

When I did that one thing, attached is the result. I seems to not only have gotten rid of the huge use from Podcasts but system data plunged way down.

In the last update podcasts did get a change so maybe that’s the issue? Not sure but if you see apps that seem unusually high try removing and reinstalling them.

Same problem here. After failing to find any good solutionss I decided to reset my phone to factory defaults (not restore from backup) then gradually add apps until the problem returned. I tracked storage and here's my findings since resetting my 64GB iPhone XR on June 26th. Real life got in the way so I couldn't record storage as often as I'd like!

You can see a big drop at the end of July. This coincides with when I disabled background app refresh. At the time I disabled it nothing changed, but the next morning the System Data dropped back to normal levels. This may be a coincidence or may be that a rogue app is writing to System Data in the background. I'm gonna see how things look over the next week, then gradually re-enable background app refresh on some of my apps to see if I can find the culprit.

It would be interesting to know if anyone else gets similar success after disabling background app refresh then waiting a day to see if it's cleared. I'm still not convinced it's the cause, but it's a possiblity!

Similar issues - IOS 15.4 caused a full 10GB increase in storage space on my iPhone 11 256GB. PLUS, some apps randomly show 1 to 1.5GB storage one minute then much smaller storage a few minutes later, even when the app is not being used at all (For example, Amazon app was 1.44GB storage 15 minutes ago, now it's 224MB, and I have not used this app in at least 24-hours and its closed -- sure maybe something small happens in background app refresh, but not a GB of storage in 15 minutes, and this same thing happens with FB, Instagram and other apps -- one moment IOS storage shows storage of 1.5GB and then it falls to 200-300MB a few minutes later - this started with IOS 15.4). In summary, overall storage reporting is very unreliable in 15.4 and it's frustrating.

I’ve been struggling with this for couple weeks. I finally been able to fix it by removing app one by one. Eventually i picked up one that initiate storage purge. That’s why i made conclusion this issue is either an app that cause log file to grow for ever or IOS that has a log level forgot in debug mode of something. Removed app until your see storage decrease. Try one at a time to be able to identify which app cause this. Apple should do better to provide relevent info about which app use the system data.

Has no one thought to tap on the System Data entry to disclose the detailed information within? Doesn't this seem like the logical next step to see which System Data category is the culprit?

Quick look seems to indicate 15.5 has resolved or at least improved the issue

This happened to me after last update. 256G iPhone 12 Pro. I had 50% free space prior to the update and suddenly getting warnings and system data is occupying 70% of my storage out of nowhere.

Apple needs to do something about this ASAP.

Same issue here. Tried to figure out what could filled systems data like this i have no clue which i think this is a huge lack in ios management. We should be able to drill down this at least to know where it come from. For now i delete app slowly hoping this is caused by one of them but so far no result System Data increase every day. Running 15.4.1

Look like somebody forget to remove debug mode logging somewhere and they deploy this all over the place…filling everybody’s phone…Apple look at this seriously.

I spent a few hours with a friend of mine who works for Apple. He couldn’t figure out what was happening either. Like many have said before, it’s just started happening over the last few weeks.

I recently bought the 13 Pro switching from the 12 Pro and thought maybe the change would due the trick.

Initially it seemed to do fix the issue. After 24 hours and rebooting my new phone when everything was moved to it, I didn’t see the issue.

48 hours later there it was again out of nowhere.

I don’t know if you mean 10gb have been taken off or 10gb aren’t showing but on my iPod it says the 15.4.1 update takes up 6.94gb and the system files take up 3.38gb so maybe this solves you problem?

Well I didn’t have this issue before 15.5. In fact I updated to 15.5 last week and didn’t have any issues right away. Then today out of the blue I was getting iPhone storage is full error. Force restart takes the error away for a few hours but then the error is back.

When I look at storage it intially said I was using 276 gigs of 512 gigs and I have 4 T of iCloud with a little under 2 T free. But then with changing nothing suddenly storage details says 313.3 gigs of 512 gigs used.

After reading through this forum I scrolled down to the bottom of the storage details page and the system data is just spinning.

Apple Support claimed they had never seen this issue which after reading this and another forum must have been a lie since I see many people have reported the issue. I made an in person appointment for tomorrow but I don’t know how much help that will be!

am using iPhone 13, I am facing a storage bug issue after the ios 15.4 update , before the update storage was 30 gb , after the update it is 43 gb

I am dying over here. Just deleted so many apps. Happened randomly tonight.