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
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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.
I tried a test. Using a Mini 6 with no music (or synced data storage with 17.0.2), I copied over 2GB of music using iMazing, not iTunes, and synced data now shows up, about equal to the downloaded music size. I then deleted the music on the iPad and it cleared the synced data.
Yep, under 17.0.3, Music is no longer listed as a separate storage category. It is apparently contained in the Synced Content category. So, Storage is no longer reporting Music and Synced Content separately.
mixmaster55, your only problem is that the issue is fixed by installing 17.0.3, so you may have to offload or delete apps to get this update to install.
For me the “synced content” was 11.3Gb. It matched my music (2.8Gb) + 2 disney movies (8.5Gb) that was synced to my iPad. The “synced content” doesn’t appear to actually be taking up space as I added up all the data not in that category and it totaled my storage amount. So I think it’s just a weird way of highlighting how much of your memory is used by synced items. But then why would they make it confusing and put it in the colored progress bar. -.-
Well finally after 3 weeks of not being able to sync and several phone calls with Nick a senior apple advisor, I finally have a phone that will now sync with itunes on my pc.
All software was up to date.
I then deselected sync all music and selected just one song which basically removed music off my phone.
After sync finished, I then selected all music again and huzzah all my music has synced and all storage duplication error messages have gone.
A huge thank you to Nick for his personal attention over the last few weeks who got the issues raised to engineering who then released the ios 17.0.3 update.
iOS 17.2.1 corrects the problem for me. I have 11.4 Gb of music synced from my computer. Synced media show on memory report is 11.15 Gb. Memory allocated to the Music app is now 23.4Mb for the app and another 100.7Mb for the Music app's documents and data. iOS 17.2.1 appears to have stopped the iPhone from mapping memory for synced music to both synced media and to the Music app's Documents and Data.
Updating to 17.0.3 resolved this for me.
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 :-)
On occasion, I’ll sync a downloaded movie or TV show (in MP4 format) from my iMac to my iPad to watch away from my home. I did that with two movies and one TV show episode after updating to iOS 17 and see that the 973.1MB they represent is exactly the same as the “Synced Content“ category. I expect that once I delete them, that category will go to zero MB.
I don’t know how this affects the overall storage calculation, but I hope this helps in understanding what contributes to the category.
Synced content is content that has been synced from another device like a Mac. You can remove the synced content by connecting your device to your Mac and disable the syncing so that it does not share any data like music, photos, or files
To show there was a problem that has been fixed. First screenshot is from iOS 17.0.2. Clearly the memory for synced music was encumbering twice the memory of the actual music size. I couldn’t upgrade the iOS without deleting severs gbytes of music due to an out of memory error
after upgrading to iOS 17.2, the assignment of memory duplication error has been corrected. I don’t have as much music on my iPhone now so the amount of memory isn’t important but iOS is clearly no longer assigning memory to all my music “documents “ twice.
All of your music files should now be booked under “synced content “ memory. That is correct. What should now see is that is no longer showing up in the memory assigned to “music”. Before it was fixed, music synced from a computer was using the same amount of memory in both Music and Synced content (duplicating memory tied up by music files)
You are confusing memory categories. The memory allocation for synced content is because you have accumulated lots of music. 26 GB of it. A typical music file for a single song takes about 5 MB of storage. The music app is around 185MB in size. That is the app and your music library metadata. I’ll bet you have a lot more than 40 songs in your library ( 40 songs would fill around 200MB of storage). When you look at the music app memory allocation, it is just reporting the size of the app and library metadata. When you click on the music app details, it will show you the total amount of music in the library, but it will be roughly 26 GB, and is booked in the phones memory map a synced content. Looks at the memory bar at the top of the screen. There is still a music allocation for the music app and music library’s metadata, but that category DOES NOT INCLUDE the space required for your large collection of Music files.
This is "fixed" for me in 17.0.3 iPhone 15 Pro.
The synced content is music that I own and had synced to my phone before having an Apple Music subscription.
This is no longer counted under "music". Only music that I downloaded from Apple Music is counted as "Music".
ios 17.2.1 fixed it for me. See these screenshots showing that music files are tabulated only under the synced content category. The data reported as Music on the color bar showing allocation by categories appears to only be the size allocated to the music app. Opening the music app detailed report shows this. The Music memory size no longer includes the 11 G of music synced from my computer and the synced content size is identical to my size of my music files. Before it was fixed iOS was encumbering 11 G as both synced content and another 11 G + the music app size. This double allocation appears to have been fixed
17.0.3 fixed it for me
Synced Content iPhone Storage - iOS 17 Update
