TLDR;
- Delete all voice memos incl Recently Deleted
- Wait 5-10 mins
- Delete Voice Memos app
- Wait 5-10 mins
- Power off iPhone fully (don’t skip this)
- Power on iPhone
- Wait 10 mins (important to wait for phone to clean itself)
- Reinstall Voice Memos from App Store
I was having exactly the same problem. This is what I did to fix the problem….
Initially I deleted all my voice memos, including all the ones in the “Recently Deleted”, then deleted the Voice Memos app (via Settings>General>iPhone Storage>find Voice Memos in the list>tap Delete App (not Offload App)). After deleting the app, wait around 10 mins to allow the phone to finish deleting everything behind the scenes (it’s still doing the deletion after you pressed delete). You can monitor this by going to Settings>General>About, then look at the Available space. It won’t change in real time, you need to press back, then re-open the About screen, and see if the Available space has changed. I generally keep doing this every 10 secs or so until I can see it’s been stable for a few mins. Note I only had around 2GB to delete. If you have a lot less or more to delete it might take less or more time.
Here’s what I did different. Initially I just re-installed the Voice Memos app, but the Documents & Data was still too high. So the next time, I deleted the app, waited a bit of time, then switched off the phone (full power off), wait a min or so, then power back on, wait 10 mins or so. After you restart your phone, your phone cleans out its cache / corrupted files / cleans itself. You can monitor this again in the Available memory space as above. Then once it’s settled down, reinstall Voice Memos from the App Store. It’s important to wait for the phone to be stable before reinstalling the app. Your Documents & Data issue should be solved.
