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]
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]
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.
Same here. On my 64gig xr I have 12gig of mp3 music and now I have 14 gig of "synced content" as well. Will this be fixed or is this Apple BS to use up memory?!
I have a brand new fully updated iPhone 15 Pro Max. I synced 60 GB of music with over 7,000 songs. I checked Storage and it showed 60 GB Music and 60 GB Synced Content. I tried to delete the music which also cleared the synced content. Now the phone thinks the music is synced and it isn't. I have all my space back, but very little of my music library. I have a few purchased songs from Apple and none of the 7000 songs are on my phone. I try to sync, it runs a few seconds and does nothing.
It is taking up 60 GB on my new iPhone 15 Pro Max. My music is also 60 GB. Remove the music and the synced content goes away so it is obviously duplicate data. But I can't delete it.
I was able to force a sync again by Selecting the iPhone in iTunes. Select Music on the left. I Selected the "Selected Playlists..." option, but I did not select any songs. Itunes crunched for a few minutes. I then did the same thing, but selected Entire Music Library. The phone is syncing. The Synced content folder is growing at the same pace as the music library so instead of using 60 GB it will use 120 GB. I am hoping this is just temporary data which will be removed at some point; if not this is a big problem.
share3141 wrote:
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.
Are you using either iTunes Match, or the Sync Library feature that is available with an Apple Music subscription?
If you were not doing any kind of syncing like that, then all of the songs that you downloaded into your iPhone's Music Library (using iTunes or Finder) would count against device storage, but none of them would logically be part of Synced Content (if Syncing referred only to iTunes Match / Apple Music / iCloud).
Theres something really strange going on. I have a ton of downloaded music in my itunes/"Music" app from throughout the years, mostly pre streaming.
I think I had about 40-60GB of music. I honestly dont remember the exact figure.
My macbook storage says I have 40GB of music files overall
My music app says I have 158GB of music on it (???)
My iPhone storage, after the ios 17 update, says I have 72GB of music and 40GB of "synced content"
What in the actual F is going on ?
Quick update. I turned off the "sync library" option on the Music app, and it went from 158GB to 40GB. That is more in line with how much of my own personal music files I have. I guess the rest was stuff from apple music ? Even that doesn't make sense as I dont use apple music often and dont actually download stuff that I add to my library.
I backed up my 14Pro after updating the ios and I hope this storage problem doesn't transfer to my 15. Its in the process of restoring now. The back up and now restore process took unusually long and Im wondering if its because of the extra junk in the backup.
Im afraid after this restore, there will still be a ton of "documents and data" junk. The 14 is currently sitting at 242GB of "documents and data", which is what I had to do a backup off. If the 15 has anywhere near that after the restore idk what to do
I am using an application called iMazing. I am not, and have never, subscribed to Apple Music.
And you used the word "logically" which is exactly the issue I am referring too!
So this issue of "Synced Content" appears to be a shared experience.
The question is why was this invented? It might make sense if you are a
subsciber to Apple Music although I'm not sure how. But if you are
managing your own music library what purpose does it serve? I can't
believe someone made a "mistake" putting this feature in. This is a
pretty big mistake. Why would you double count your music files? I've
read this feature has been present during b**a as well. It sounds like
this is by design.
How do we raise this issue to the powers that
be? IMO, this should be removed for those music files that are managed
externally and not part of Apple Music. It worked this way, as far as I
know, on earlier production releases of ios. And why all the obscurity surrounding
it? Apple support seems to be in the dark - at least based on the three
people I've talked to.
I had 16 GB free on my iPhone and no iTunes music synced.
Then I synced 8 GB of iTunes music and now I have 8 GB free on my iPhone and 8 GB as "Music" + 8 GB as "Synced Content".
It's obvious that the 8 GB of "Synced Content" is not occupying real space on my iPhone, it's just a strange way Apple has to tell you that 8 GB of the storage is of synced content, in my case already classified as iTunes music.
Very confusing but not really using additional storage.
Do the test :-)
fabrica64 wrote:
I had 16 GB free on my iPhone and no iTunes music synced.
Then I synced 8 GB of iTunes music and now I have 8 GB free on my iPhone and 8 GB as "Music" + 8 GB as "Synced Content".
It's obvious that the 8 GB of "Synced Content" is not occupying real space on my iPhone, it's just a strange way Apple has to tell you that 8 GB of the storage is of synced content, in my case already classified as iTunes music.
Very confusing but not really using additional storage.
Do the test :-)
You're right, it's a display bug showing the same count in two different headers. One of the two entries is likely to be a virtual pointer (reference) to the real one, rather like a screen icon or shortcut is not the real app.
Bug reports should be submitted direct to Apple's team using the Feedback pages. The developers don't read here so it has to go by the official route.
share3141 wrote:
How do we raise this issue to the powers that
be?
It's a simple display bug. The same count is included twice, someone got it wrong but in terms of how damaging, it is trivial because the same storage space is simply counted twice. It is ugly and annoying, embarrassing for whoever made the mistake but it doesn't impact device usability (except to waste some user time complaining about it).
Wrong feedback page above and I was too late to edit the link. I will put money in the swear box but fortunately I noticed before anyone demanded free beer!
The correct feedback will be Feedback - iPhone - Apple
I did do the test.
I deleted the files in Music and both the storage allocation for Music and Synced Content went to zero and the total available storage available increased by the sum of those two categories.
When I re-installed my music files both Music and Synced Content reported almost identical amounts and my available storage decreased by the sum of those two categories.
Are you suggesting that the summary numbers displayed are incorrect or misstated and we need to subtract the amount of memory shown in "Synced Content" from storage available to arrive at a true measure of storage available used?
Wrong. It impacted my iPad mini update last night because now I didn’t have enough room to do the update. Had to spend a half hour deleting a bunch of files to make space since the double-count sync files took 12gb of my spare storage.
I checked again today. Storage shows 94 GB used of 256 GB. My music collection is 61 GB, and Synced content is 61 GB. If I multiply 61 GB by 2 then I get 122 GB. It appears maybe the synced content is just showing where it came from. In my case it seems the graph at the top is showing what appears to be duplicate wasted space, but the phone isn't really using 122 GB for my music.
Synced Content iPhone Storage - iOS 17 Update