iPadOS 26 taking up too much storage.

The illustrated storage used by iPadOS for your iPad 9 is entirely as expected.

Like it or not, as with any operating system, the OS occupies storage space. Unlike temporary storage used to store cached data, or the storage used to save your own files and data, the space required for the core OS-files cannot be reduced.

iPadOS 26 has many new features and capabilities - and as a consequence will require a little more storage space than earlier versions of iPadOS. As your iPad 9 does not support Apple Intelligence, your space requirements are significantly less than more advanced models of iPad to do support this feature. By example:

Hi, I'm sorry to hear that, but there is unfortunately nothing much you can do. I have an iPad too and it's exactly the same. You can try backing up the iPad and deleting everything and restoring it. It may clear up some cache and open some space. But honestly it takes long and I don't think it's quite worth it, because it will fill up later again.

Sontypoo2 wrote:

Ok, thanks. Im just asking because I only have 64 gigabytes of storage and I like keeping my storage low.

If you bought that IPad you bought the wrong one those iPads are usually for educational institutions.

I have 1 ½ terabytes on my iPad.