System Data is taking up 54.91 GB on my iPhone 13 Pro with iOS 26

Updated my iPhone 17 Pro this morning to iOS 26.1, system data immediately went from 64GB to 8GB but now after 10 hours we are already back to 12GB...

Let's wait and see but I am not confident at all...

NetSecNW wrote:

I updated OTA. Had to delete a shed load of apps to create the 14Gb space needed for update. Took over and hour to update. Managed to re-install all my apps now. Bad design.

Backup and restore may have taken less time.

You stated that you just updated to iOS 26.2.1. It’s normal for System Data (cashes) to grow for the first 48 to 72 hours. This reflects the normal indexing, syncing and iCloud activity that is taking place. System Data should stabilize after that period and you can monitor for abnormal increases in System Data size.

I was about to do your workaround, but I found out the iOS 26.0.1 update fixed my issue! I checked my System Data after the update and found it freed up my space to just under 20 GB (from 108.5 GB!)

maybe set your forum default sort order to "Oldest" in your user preferences to follow the thread as it was posted.

Then look at my post above yours.

Hi, I have this same problem since updating to iOS 26 and it remains with iOS 26.0.1 even after a backup and restore.

What do you mean exactly with "reinstalled everything from the backup."?

It's different from restoring from a backup saved on my MacBook?

Thanks!

francorg wrote:

What do you mean exactly with "reinstalled everything from the backup."?

It's different from restoring from a backup saved on my MacBook?

Thanks!

No, icloud backups and Mac backups contain the same data

Sat here at 04:22 in the morning updating my Pro 16 to 26.1 as system data is ruining my phone. All my main apps almost uninstalled. Wife’s same phone hasn’t got the problem. Go figure. Will update after the upgrade.

I updated a while ago, but I’ve noticed apps are offloading themselves again. I checked my storage and… it’s happening again.

It seems Apple hasn’t actually fixed the issue after all. Hopefully it does get handled soon, because this is frankly frustrating to deal with. I’d much rather not reset my phone, if possible.

I just updated from 26.0 to 26.1 on iPhone 14 Pro Max through iTunes

I don’t use any AI focused apps and deleted basically every game.

Before update, I was at ~45 GBs, after… I’m at 46. This is incredibly frustrating, as I am constantly offloading and redownloading apps that I use frequently, if this keeps up I may finally make the switch to samsung.

Seeing others go through the backup and restoring only to have it quickly build back up just discourages me so much, others I know do this weekly just to use their phone which feels excessive and overall not user friendly.

Hi all

My husband has this issue on his iPhone 17 Pro Max running IOS 26.2. He has only had the phone a couple months and seems to have had the issue from the start.

Reading through the comments here it's not clear if everyone has overcome the issue. Has anyone managed to solve it without wiping their phone and starting from new (not a backup)? Has anyone had help from Apple to sort it? Any other fixes or any idea the root cause?

Many thanks!!

iOS 26.2.1 still does not fix this. Systemdata is flushed after the update and then starts to grow 1-2 GB per hour. Apple Support is unable to find the issue. For my understating it should not be that hard to find growing files in the filesystem.

I now have 50-100 hours left until I need to restore my device for the 12st time, I think… 🤬

Good point. Yes, the battery drain is also abnormal high. I try to not use the device at all to minimize interferrece and so the app with the most battery usage are is "Settings" because I always watch the system data usage.

I also have closed all other apps and actualy only use mail, home screen or autheticator.

A few restores ahead I thought it was the mail app, because I have hugh mail accounts and saw that even I have apple intelligence disabled the mail app is allowed to "analyse data for apple intelligence". But turning this off also and even deleting my mail accounts does not help.

I have several apps on my device and I also think one of them could be faulty and growing the system data. But if the memory information is able to show the size of the system data someone should be able to check what files are growing. I had 3 excessize apple support sessions with installing diagnostic profiles and reading out crash data over iTunes. All resulting in nothing.

You are right, maybe I'm a bit early for this statement and the growth speed actually seems to be lower because I had 2-4 GB per hour on the last restore tries. I will cross fingers and wait a while. 33GB for now...