Synced Content iPhone Storage - iOS 17 Update

after I updated to ios17 it appears that a synced content occupy at least 800mb on my iphone storage. How can I remove this. Please help. Thank you


[Re-titled by Moderator]

Posted on Sep 18, 2023 11:12 PM

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I talked to Apple Support. They told me it was simply a "reclassification" as to how storage was used. That is, the category called "system info" was split out and much of the information was now displayed in "synced content". That made no sense to me as the overall storage usage on the device went up. In my case, 6.6 GB. If it was split you would expect the total storage consumption to remain the same. When presented with that question answers became very vague. In short, I don't think customer support understands the issue either.

Posted on Sep 22, 2023 5:25 AM

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Question marked as Helpful

Sep 22, 2023 7:00 AM in response to share3141

I did a little more research.

I was also told by Apple Support that "Synced Content" did not contain any duplicate media files.

So I deleted my entire music collection on my iPad.

Both Music and Synced Content dropped to 0 byte usage.

I got back over 12+GB of storage.

Then I download, via a USB, all of my songs to my iPad - about 6.2GB

Lo and behold, both Music and Synced Content were 6.2 GB for a total of about 12+ GB.

So...either Apple Support lied or they really don't know anything about the new storage category called "Synced Cotent".

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and presume they are uninformed.

The larger question is why the developers of ios 17 decided to penalize Apple users who seek to manage their own media by double counting and unecessarily using resources.

I can come up with no technical reason why this is so since this "feature" did not exist prior to ios 17.

I also ran the same test on my iPhone with the same result.

My iPhone is an older model and I've been contemplating a new device.

However, I am reluctant to be forced into buying a device with more storage than I actually need simply to accomodate an apparent flaw in ios 17.

So I'm looking at Android for the phone or possibly a separate song player device for use when I travel and delete my songs from the iPhone.

I'll keep the iPad and live with the impact because I don't add a lot of apps to it. I use it mostly for browsing and reading.

Really not a nice tactic - especially undocumented and leaving your support associates having to take the brunt of the criticism.


116 replies

Sep 21, 2023 2:01 PM in response to Yikes_this_isnt_good

I lost 6.6GB on my iPhone and on my iPad. I can't find any explanation on any forum.

It appears to have something to d with multimedia and a computer.

Don't know how to reduce or eliminate it.

Don't know where it came from in the first place.

I don't want to have to reset my devices and hope it goes away.

It looks like a deal to sell more hardware as far as I am concerned.

Really angry about this as I try to manage my storage carefully.

Question marked as Best answer

Sep 22, 2023 5:25 AM in response to Sarlochin

I talked to Apple Support. They told me it was simply a "reclassification" as to how storage was used. That is, the category called "system info" was split out and much of the information was now displayed in "synced content". That made no sense to me as the overall storage usage on the device went up. In my case, 6.6 GB. If it was split you would expect the total storage consumption to remain the same. When presented with that question answers became very vague. In short, I don't think customer support understands the issue either.

Question marked as Helpful

Sep 22, 2023 7:00 AM in response to share3141

I did a little more research.

I was also told by Apple Support that "Synced Content" did not contain any duplicate media files.

So I deleted my entire music collection on my iPad.

Both Music and Synced Content dropped to 0 byte usage.

I got back over 12+GB of storage.

Then I download, via a USB, all of my songs to my iPad - about 6.2GB

Lo and behold, both Music and Synced Content were 6.2 GB for a total of about 12+ GB.

So...either Apple Support lied or they really don't know anything about the new storage category called "Synced Cotent".

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and presume they are uninformed.

The larger question is why the developers of ios 17 decided to penalize Apple users who seek to manage their own media by double counting and unecessarily using resources.

I can come up with no technical reason why this is so since this "feature" did not exist prior to ios 17.

I also ran the same test on my iPhone with the same result.

My iPhone is an older model and I've been contemplating a new device.

However, I am reluctant to be forced into buying a device with more storage than I actually need simply to accomodate an apparent flaw in ios 17.

So I'm looking at Android for the phone or possibly a separate song player device for use when I travel and delete my songs from the iPhone.

I'll keep the iPad and live with the impact because I don't add a lot of apps to it. I use it mostly for browsing and reading.

Really not a nice tactic - especially undocumented and leaving your support associates having to take the brunt of the criticism.


Sep 22, 2023 8:23 AM in response to pons130

So... an update. I was having all kinds of issues with my phone ( besides the 'Synced Content' issue ) so I did a full reset and restored from my last backup. All the music I'd synced from iTunes was gone ( as expected ). There was no 'Synced Content' after doing this. I just synced a bunch of music ( 15.55 GB ) from iTunes and sure enough there is now Synced Content of 14.48 f'ingGB.


WTF Apple?

Synced Content iPhone Storage - iOS 17 Update

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