iphone 4 says not enough storage, but i deleted almost everything

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THE LONG STORY, HERE IT IS IN A NUTSHELL: Get "iFunBox" (or some other file management app) and look for any hidden files on your iPhone. Then DELETE them!

I have been having a the same/similar problem since updating to ios8 (whenever it was when it first came out) to my 4s. I kept getting messages that the storage was full when i knew **** well that it wasn't! Also the phone would say one amount was free, iTunes would say another amount… nothing ever matched up. When looking under "manage storage" on the phone, just flipping back and forth from each app's info to "storage" would make the "available" amount go down (not a lot, but it kept filling up!). Music would show up in the "on my device/music" that i never loaded or downloaded from my library. When i deleted them they always came back but showed up as zero k. This always started when i turned the phone on to show all my music and turned on the iCloud library. The only thing that seemed to clear all this extra storage was to reset it and restore from back-up. Very time consuming and ineffective as within a few days it would start with the storage full messages again. The other day i read someone had used an app on the mac called "iFunBox" to find hidden files in their phone and delete them. i downloaded the app (free!) and found that i had hidden files too. A LOT OF HIDDEN FILES! In the phone under the "Raw File System" i found a folder named "Cloud Assets" that contained a little over 440mb of mp3 & m4a files, and accompanying plist files. I don't keep any music on the phone anymore, i stream everything from iCloud. It seems these were made from music i had recently listened to. The names were all altered. I copied them to my iMac so I could open & inspect what they were. Their names looked liked this:

CloudAssets/persistentid-4023831224729247364-HQ.mp3

CloudAssets/persistentid-4023831224729247726-LWHQ.plist

CloudAssets/persistentid-4023831224729249236-LWHQ.m4a

There was no way to play them from the phone, so i deleted them all and freed up a lot of space. BUT… as soon as i began streaming music again, a whole new batch showed up. Deleted them. Streamed. More files! This has been going on for the last 3 days. So big question is WHY DOES IT KEEP DOWNLOADING/GENERATING THESE FILES! (Apple??? What is going on here)

PS- i have just found a lot of weird cache files of iTunes artwork. Over a 1.5GB's worth of album and video artwork that i can find no logical reason for being on the phone (as their is no corresponding music or video on the phone either). Gonna delete them too!

- iPhone 4S iOS8.4.1 (but most of this took place with earlier versions) capacity: 5.34GB

I have had the same problem on my iPhone 6 Plus and 7 plus. I work around it by backing up my phone, restoring it by wiping it clean, and then restoring from my newest backup. Then when I check my settings, the storage accurately reflects what is on my phone. This may be a convoluted hassle of a fix, but it's all I've figured out on my own.

Hello Jerzeygirl70,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities!

You can check to see what is taking up space on your phone with this from:

iPhone, iPad, and iPod: Understanding capacity

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1867

View usage on iOS

Tap Settings > General > Usage to view the amount of space each app and its content takes on your device.

Tap an app for more detailed information about its usage.

Depending on the app, you may also be able to delete some of the app's content, or delete the app and its content.

You can also update the iPhone through iTunes directly if you have the most current version 11.1.

You can download the newest version here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Keep in mind the requirements for it as well.

Macintosh System Requirements

• Mac computer with an Intel Core processor
• OS X version 10.6.8 or later
• 400MB of available disk space
• Broadband Internet connection to use the iTunes Store

And

Windows System Requirements

• PC with a 1GHz Intel or AMD processor and 512MB of RAM
• Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later, 32-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8
• 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 require the iTunes 64-bit installer
• 400MB of available disk space
• Broadband Internet connection to use the iTunes Store

All the best,

Sterling

My iPhone 4 is not updated, but I only have 5 gbs of data and I tried to update my apps but it said "no more storage available check your storage settings" or something so my apps are stuck there and I can't even get on them! What should I do??

I added up all the storage that my phone says that its using and it isn't using nearly as much as it says it is... It currently says that I am using 4.2 GB and have 1.2 GB available. I added up the storage of each app and discovered that I am ACTUALLY using about 2.5 GB and am definitely not using 4.2! This is especially aggravating because, for whatever reason, when my iPhone says that my storage is too full, almost ALL of my music deletes a from my Apple Music app and I have to re-download it from iTunes. Please help me figure out what's wrong! I have included a list below of what app says that it's using so that you can see that something is definitely wrong...

Messages: 425 MB

iOS 8.2: 301 MB

Photos and Camera: 293 MB

[Game]: 194 MB

[Photo Editor]: 127 MG

[Game]: 100 MB

[Game]: 92.5 MB

Pandora: 82.5 MB

Skype: 77.1 MB

[Photo Editor]: 76.8 MB

Wattpad: 68 MB

[Utility]: 61.5 MB

[Text Editor]: 61.1 MB

[Game]: 60.6 MB

Music: 56.5 MB

YouTube: 51.2 MB

Mail: 44 MB

[Game] 42 MB

[Photo Editor]: 35.1 MB

Gmail: 35.1 MB

[Utility]: 33.1 MB

Instagram: 29 MB

[Photo Editor]: 28.1 MB

[Utility]: 19.5 MB

[Photo Editor]: 12.4 MB

[Utility]: 12.3 MB

[Utility]: 11.9 MB

[Utility]: 10.6 MB

[Utility]: 8.6 MB

[Utility]: 6.3 MB

iBooks: 3.4 MB

Contacts: 2.9 MB

Voice Memos: 1.6 MB

Safari: 1.1 MB

[Utility]: 1000 KB

Calenders: 912 KB

Sounds: 240 KB

Health: 208 KB

Podcasts: 8 KB