Synced Content iPhone Storage - iOS 17 Update

Soo I found this to be an issue too.

But: can someone actually tell me where I can find a definition for “synced content”? I have not been able to find what data falls under this category. This part is quite important, because it will tell us (and Apple) what data categorised as “synced content “, which then determines how much of this category is duplicate, and how much is unique. For example, I can see how my notes are synced content as they are synced across all my Apple devices. But music is not synced at all. Nor are documents like pdf files, or photos for that matter.

1-19-24 and all if a sudden my phone showing synced data now too so No, they have not fixed this. It’s taking up 26.45 GB. My purchased music library has been stored on my phone on the apple music app for many years since my windows 7 computer died. But my music is only 185.6 MB and shows it’s still stored on the apple music app on my phone. I pay extra monthly for extra iCloud storage too 1/2 of which I don’t even use. So I want to know what all this synced media is and I want it gone. I am tired of all the constant “improvements” that are just another mystery and headache. I watch no tv and very few videos and play no games on my phone. I browse Insta and offload when not using. I browse etsy & ebay. There is just zero explanation for what is taking up all these GBs on my phone now. My phone is an 11. At almost 70 on SS I can’t afford to keep investing into the latest tech devices. I have already invested plenty but they just can’t seem to leave well enough alone. Oh I saw my samsung smart television listed as another device on my iPhone today too! And I didn’t do that. It’s never been listed there before. So I am thinking they just hooked up to my phone without my knowledge and maybe THAT’S what is now taking up 26.45GB on my phone. I clicked on it and said to remove it. But it’s still showing the synced 26.45 GB of media. Can anyone help?

Apple edited my response by removing it. (Soo yes they read these forums)

here it is once more slightly modified…

Can anyone tell me what files are actually counted under “synced content”? Where can I find that information?

i would expect the phone to make that information available. Or maybe some support page, but so far nothing.

also, if “synced content” shows up as separate data, then it includes data that is not covered under other file categories. That would imply that the suggestion by others, that it double counts data, or covers already counted data categories, is not correct . 

i can imagine that any data synced through the iCloud falls under this category, but for me that’s less than 5gb (I don’t have any extra data for iCloud), and yet my phone reports over to 50gb as “synced content”.

Forgot to mention: my Music takes up only 3.95GB and my photos take up 6.02GB. All other apps on my phone that use storage take up 1GB or less each. So what does the 196.72GB of Synced Media contain??

I just fixed my issue.

I constantly transfer music from my computer to my phone. Last week, my synced media said 19GB which is the accurate amount of music I have synced from my laptop. Yesterday I did a lot of editing on my music files so I wanted to delete all the music on my phone and do a fresh sync. On my phone, I went into Settings - Music - Dowloaded Music - Edit - Delete all songs. I then connected to my laptop, made sure all my MP3 files were in the music app, then went into finder and clicked on sync. When it was done, I checked my iPhone storage and it said synced media was close to 35GB. It seemed as though there was duplicated somewhere.

The issue was that I had imported my downloaded local files into Spotify.

Spotify has this feature where u can import your downloaded (iTunes/Synced music) into the Spotify app. I had this enabled (I never really used it) so you can play your Spotify music and downloaded synced music all in the same app. I think this was causing the duplicates. I went on my phone into Spotify - top left profile button - settings and privacy - local files - and disabled show audio files from this device. I also went to the extent of deleting and re-downloading Spotify on my phone just for extra measure. I then put my phone to charge overnight and when I woke up, the synced media category went from 35GB yesterday, back down to the normal 19GB today. I am not sure if the Spotify issue was the real culprit but it is worth a shot.

It's planned obsolescence. That's the business model. People would not keep buying new $800-dollar phones if the old ones worked fine. They are double-counting your data, reducing storage, then sending software updates that require more space. It's like when they admitted reducing phone performance to 'save batteries'. That's also why new OS's are not 'compatible' with older computers. If you make a stink about it, they can do it (trust me, said the guy with the 2009 iMac!) but everyone is racing for the new model, not squeezing out value.

My wife's iPhone 11 Pro 128GB had the same problem after upgrading to IOS 17. She picked up a whopping 60GB of "synced media" which meant she couldn't update to 17.4.1 because of lack of space on her phone and also whe wasn't able to back her phone up to her MBA because she kept getting false message that the MBA didn't have enough space which it did, when previously she had 60GB free. The Genius at our local Apple store had no idea of what to do about it either. After lots of fiddling around I came up with this fix: She checked that all her music on the Music App on her MBA that she backs her phone up to was exactly what she was happy with, and then we deleted the Music App and all her music on her iPhone and then did a back up to the MBA and voila, now she has 60GB free again and only 6GB of mysterious "synced media". I think Apple is road testing their updates with the loyal customers, rather than in their labs... Hope this helps folks:-)

Exact same issue here, but my 'Synced Content' is taking up 6 f'ing GB. iOS 17 iPhone 12.

WTF, Apple?

294.71 Gb of “synced content”

kinda hoping to get some specifics on how I can identify what this content is and what controls the “syncing”

17.0

13 Pro

After updating to ios17 I now have 21.51 GB of “Synced content” which leaves very little space on my iPhone 11. Please find a fix for this.

47GB lost overnight and now my device is full. Pretty angry 17.0.1 didn’t fix this. What is Apple doing??

50 GB taking up from this synched content BS on my phone because of my large music library on my MacBook. No good, Hope they have an answer for this soon!

It is not using a total of 12+ GB, it is only using 6 GB but accounted in two separate categories

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?!