Synced Content iPhone Storage - iOS 17 Update

Just hit this exact same issue. Feel like I’m being punished for having my own music collection and being forced to get Apple Music and stream. I don’t want to do that, I enjoy having my own music collection that I manage.

this better be corrected as there’s no justification to count it twice.

It seems that your new iPhone has more free space than old one. "Synced Content" seems to be just a display bug showing the same count in two different categories but not occupying any additional space. On my iPhone free memory continued the same, before and after the upgrade to iOS 17.

In my case, "synced content" shows up on "iphone storage" as approximately a duplicate of synced music. In fact, "synced content" even showed up as a duplicate of music that was added manually (not synced) in iTunes. However, it appears that synced content does not count against available storage space: the iphone storage space according to iTunes does not display "synced content" and that available iphone space according to iTunes is what I expected. The available space according to iTunes (the expected space) matches the available space according to "iphone storage" on the iphone (total storage - current content). Maybe synced content is just informational?

On hold with a "senior" advisor at AppleCare now about the same issue. 32.75gb of music and 31.83gb of "synced content". It happened after installing iOS 17 yesterday. 17.0.2 hasn't fixed it. 127.24gb of 128gb used - makes the phone unusable. iPhone 12

sparksd -

Of course my numbers are different but I am having the same discrepancies between iTunes, iPhone Storage, About, and iMazing.

The issue for me is that music I download to my apple devices is counted twice.

When I upgraded from 16.x to 17.x I lost storage capacity.

Not to put too fine a point on it - I want my storage back.

The silence from Apple is contributing to this issue.

People are apparently receiving contradictory information and often incorrect information that does not agree with the facts that some of us are seeing on our devices.

Multiple forums and threads have consumers complaining about this issue and the lack of transparency from Apple.

There appear to be no settings or other tricks that would eliminate the extra storage being consumed in "Synced Content".

Apple is not defining what they did, how it benefits the consumer, and what remediation steps can be taken to resolve the issue.

In the absence of any statement or remedy from Apple I assume this is deliberate and conclude that Apple software sells Apple hardware and I object to being blatantly ripped off.

I have 64 g of storage on my X-ray iPhone. It shows 59.6 gigabytes of data in the storage and less than 5 gigabytes available. 25 gigabytes of data that encumber my storage ( included in the storage bar chart of 59.6 gigabytes) are in the Synched data category. If synched data isn’t tying up any real storage, I would have 44 gigabytes of available storage. However the attempt to update to 17.0.1 failed because I lacked required headroom in storage to download and run the update. If synched data is not really data written into my storage it is still logically encumbering that storage and preventing it from being used by the iOS updater, and possibly other applications

after varying sharing settings in the music app and shutting off Apple Music settings for home sharing and other experiments, but no joy. The new synched content feature still logically blocking access to the storage it has claimed but it lead to a conclusion that it was an underhanded attempt by apple to discourage transferring music files from your own library that aren’t linked to the iTunes Store to a mobile device in order to drive market demand for music streaming

heres two screenshots that leads to that conclusion. The first shows the settings general iPhone storage report of storage shown as consumed by music files and a different amount locked up by synched Data. Note that the Synched Data blocks slightly less storage that the music files use. The second from the about this iPhone menu is a screenshot showing that the music app size is the difference between the two large blocks of storage. All my music has been collected and burned from media over decades. And subtracting the size of synched data from the size of the music storage is exactly equal to the size of the music application itself. would be interesting to see a similar calculation by someone who owns both purchased music from the iTunes Store and mp3 files they have created from cds.

Seems to me from reading the thread that while the synced content may not take up additional free storage, it somehow is being used in the calculation that displays free storage on the General > Storage screen, as well of a free storage total used in an internal control table that's referenced by the update installation program to check for installation headroom. So in your case it is incorrectly assuming there's much lower free storage than is actually there.

Ok, I guess I spoke too soon. Before the update, I had approximately 65GB of music and 65GB of Synced Content. After 17.0.3, I have about the same 65GB of Synced Content, but now (and I did not see this earlier cause I didn't scroll down the storage list), the music category show 2.22GB. When I tap on that category, it shows all my ripped music. So the update corrected the double reporting but now I have no idea what the 65GB of Synced Content contains other than what it says under the category....Media content synchronized from your computer. If Music is only 2.2GB and photos are not counted, what makes up the other ~63GB of storage? No idea.

But it did free up? 62-63GB of storage it reported in the prior version of iOS 17.

Upgraded to 17.03.

Synced content stayed the same at 6.64GB.

Music dropped from 6.81GB to 177MB

System data went from 1.07GB to 6GB

iPad OS stayed the same at 9.95GB.

Overall usage went from 33.2GB to 31.75GB.

Overall a very slight reduction in reported storage used and no means to purge unwanted data other than to delete all my songs.

Issue remains that synced content added 6.64GB to overall reported storage usage from 16.X to 17.03.

No, I sync the "...important data on your iPhone to iCloud".

my entire music library is on itunes on my hard drive.

I was getting the out of room error too before i did the steps above. Once I erased all the contents and then restored (from both iCloud and via iTunes) everything worked fine.

If it were me - and this is a big if - I would back everything up and do a complete system reset and then introduce apps or photos one at a time until I found where the device started behaving strangely.

Someone at Apple knows what's going on and why. Only they're not telling consumers.

iMazing is hosted on a Mac or PC as a replacement for the iTunes app. I use iMazing running on a PC with a wired connection to my tablet or phone and the music files are copied from the PC into the Music app on the Apple device. I believe WiFi would work but I prefer the wired connection for this. I keep the music for the PC on a separate hard drive for backup (2 copies actually for backup purposes). Not sure if I answered your question ...

iMazing, on a PC, works quite well with my Apple devices. I can upload / download / backup with no issues.

It's much better than iTunes on Windows which frankly is a piece of s**t.

They are working on a new version - not sure when the release date is.

However, it doesn't resolve the problem with storage being reported by the device itself.

Moving to IOS 17 consumed about 10% more storage on my devices and I have not heard of a good explanation or discovered a way to resolve the issue.

I can only conclude this is a deliberate tactic by Apple to penalize users who have their own music files and did not buy them from Apple but ripped them from CDs or got them from non-Apple sources.

I like to be able to use my iPhone in particular in my car via Bluetooth for long drives and listen to my own music. I can only do so with the Apple app on my phone.

So I started looking for a device - a MP3 player - that I could use.

This would allow me to delete all my music from my Apple devices and recover a lot of storage.

I would have to maintain my files on my PC which I do now and upload them to a MP3 player but that's really do no big deal.

Of course, I would have two devices to deal with - my iPhone or iPad and my MP3 player.

I've not had any luck finding a MP3 player that works.

My wife has a lot of music files and they definitely don't fit on her iPhone.

I wanted an MP3 player for her as a gift when we went a month long road trip so she could listen to her music.

I tried one - don't remember which one - and it failed after I loaded the files. Couldn't hold a charge.

Since then I haven't really looked.

I suppose I ought to try again before our next trip but I'm mad and discouraged by Apple's approach.

I've invested a lot into their iPads / iPhones for numerous people in my family.

I suppose I'll have to live with their crap way of doing business or find an MP3 player that works.

Apple really doesn't want you outside of their ecosystem and penalizes you accordingly.

Interoperability across platforms is discouraged (e.g., Android, Windows and others).

Hope that all helps.

If you are still showing 8Gb of Music documents and data, do you have another music app, e.g. Spotify, that you use to store music for playback with the music app? That wouldn't show up as synced content, since synced content is only for media synced with your computer.