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

The issue related to gigantic "System data" occupying much of the space on an iPhone has already been discussed several times. I have made several search and read plenty of posts (but not all - too many). None of them was really useful.

I have an iPhone 13 Pro, running iOS 26. In order to update to iOS 26 I had to do the trick related to the date: move the date in the future, then bring it back to today, the "System Data" shrinks. However, it shrinks only temporarily.

Today I cannot update to iOS 26.0.1 because my iPhone has not enough free space.

I have 118.23 GB of 128GB used:

iOS corresponds to 14.48 GB
System Data corresponds to 54.91 GB !!! Almost half of the total space.

I have already removed all the apps I can - I cannot remove more.

What can possibly occupy that much space?

Is there any of you who was able to solve definitely this issue? (Not with the date trick).

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Gigantic "System Data" on iOS 26

iPhone 13 Pro, iOS 26

Posted on Sep 30, 2025 6:49 AM

Top-ranking reply

niconyc

Level 1

46 points

Posted on Nov 13, 2025 3:31 AM

TLDR: Use a computer to do the update if you are low on space; ios 26.1 does not seem to have the same space-hogging bug that 26.0.x did.

I had a similar issue- system data took up massive amounts of space on my iphone 14 pro with 128gb of storage forcing ios to offload apps and "optional" data (like offline language, maps, etc.) frequently, and leaving me unable to store offline music or videos and forcing most of my apps to be in an offloaded state. I've been using iphones since the beginning and I have never ever run out of space for apps and music. I was unable to install the ios 26.0.1 update without deleting a ton of stuff off my phone, so I was desperate to try the ios 26.1 update hoping it would fix the problem... .of course with 118gb used out of 128 it refused to install. Luckily I had my mac handy and I was able to do the ios update using the mac and it worked without any problems. And so today, without deleting or offloading anything vs. yesterday I now have 40gb free. This leads me to agree that there was a bug in iOS 26.0 and .0.1 that is now resolved in 26.1. For anyone blocked from upgrading to 26.1 due to storage being too full of ios data, I recommend using a computer to do a backup and update.

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

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