iCloud Drive taking up lots of phone storage

Another tried and tested method:

Go to - Settings- (right on top where your name is there) - click- then iCloud

then you'll see iCloud drive - turn it OFF

• it will tell you it will delete all items from phone. Its ok. As it will sll be on iCloud

do that and see the difference

later you can switch iCloud Drive ON again

I solved the issue for me now: it seems to be related to a faulty WhatsApp Backup on my device. I have 300MB of files in my iCloud Drive but 200GB were taken by WhatsApp apparently.

Somehow clearing up enough space to perform a WhatsApp Backup in the app solved it for me.

FINALLY !

Guys ! I think i figured it out , the main culprit is Whatsapp's backup !

1. Simply delete the existing backup from your iCloud Drive.
2. Restart your device.
3. Make a new backup.
4. Restart again , it should fix the problem.

Now just in case the problem is still not solved for you. Because it didn't for me for the first time either.

Do one thing.

Go through your Whatsapp backup and get rid of all the super extra things. Like media that are forwarded many times , files that are too large to keep. Just filter few of the items. And then repeat the first process again.

Now that all the extra stuff is dumped , make a new backup and see if it solves the issue for you.

I think Whatsapp data gets corrupted or gets buggy if you are keeping it for a long time. Deleting a few extra things and making a new backup somehow refreshes it. It worked for me. Might work for you too.

All the best , stay well.

Hello,

Yeah, something is screwed up somewhere. Try this:

1. Restart the phone
2. Check your files: Access and manage your files in iCloud Drive - Apple Support
3. Try to free up storage: How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Good luck.

Hi there,

had the same issue and did the following to solve it:

1. Go to Settings -> App Store
2. Turn on "Offload unused apps"
3. Restart phone
4. Turn off "Offload unused apps"
5. Restart phone

Thank you! Had this problem on my iPhone 15 Pro running iOS 17.2.1. I had enabled the offload unused app setting before, so I just disabled it and restarted my phone.. voila, problem solved! Thanks

I have the same issue. Did you find a solution?

I have iCloud Drive taking up 212 GB of space that is supposed to be on iCloud, which means I basically have the backup of a backup of my device sitting on my device...very strange!

Dude thank you so much! This worked for me! Cleared about 90gb of non-existent iCloud storage. I had to restart and toggle the offload unused app option 2-3 times before it finally cleared. But thanks for figuring this out! God bless you

I have the same problem and SossaOtto’s solution solve it.

400GB of non-existence iCloud Drive is now removed. (I only have about 30GB of files storing in iCloud Drive)

Big thanks! Community is much more useful than the official support in here.

check my reply:

254913413

This is brilliant and actually solved the problem for me. Many thanks.

Did not work for me, just cleared up a bit of space from unused apps.

It works for me, but not immediately.

On my iPhone 15 Pro with iOS 17.2.1, I had to wait 1-2 hours after the last step to see this effective.

Good stuff!

This helped me as well. Brilliant, thanks so much!

Thank you it did worked well with me too :)

Cheers