How do I delete "documents & data" that is consuming space?

Document & Data on iPhone is including browser history, cookies, logs, caches of photos and videos, database files and more stored by your apps. You can't delete them directly unless the app in Settings, General, Usage has an Edit option like Safari.

The only way to delete them without deleting the app itself is to use tools which can access your iPhone app directory. For example，CleanMyPhone, Copytrans, iExplorer and more.

The iExplorer tutorial:
First Step, Connect your iPhone to the computer.
Seconed Step, Click the Apps Button, and select which app's documents & data you want to delete. And then click the Documents directory, right click the files to delete.

Note: If you are a new user, do not delete all files. The app may not work normally due to the loss of some important data. So you can just delete some caches of images and videos, logs and some junk files.

The CleanMyPhone tutorial:
Step 1: Connect your iPhone to your Mac computer.
Step 2: Run CleanMyPhone on your computer, select the App Cleaner tab and click the Scanbutton to scan your device.

Step 3: After the scan is completed, click Remove to get rid of documents and data on your iPhone.

CleanMyPhone can remove cache files, junk files, documents& data and more.

Source http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/33799/is-there-a-way-to-delete-only-doc uments-data-of-an-app-without-deleting-the-app

ok so i am not sure if this is a permanent solution or not, but i found an app called PhoneClean... you can find a product key for free on youtube... it cleaned up 8gb on my phone i had 9 taken up by bs.... please let me know if this works for anyone else!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCPKeCR0CTo

http://www.imobie.com/phoneclean/

I did not pay for the Program because there was a product key that I had found on the internet... If you read the directions, it tells you what the program will do before you do it. I included the YouTube link that had the program key above^.

I have created numerous backups on both my macbook, and my iMac, and even icloud, so that I wouldn't waste all day trying to put my phone back the way it was, even with the 9+gb of wasted data. I have wasted more time finding a solution to the numerous gb of wasted data and with this phoneclean program it wiped that excess bs and I haven't seen it come back. If you wanna save iMessages, turn that feature on on your mac. If you want to save regular messages take screenshots and then offload them to your mac.

I will say, with the deep clean option you'll have to input your information into different apps like Facebook, Instagram, vine, etc.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USING THE PROGRAM... As you should with everything!

This phoneclean program was the best thing that's happened to my phone since I've been having this excess data problem for the past oh about 5 months. I felt a huge weight lifted off my back.

I have to say, I've been using PhoneClean for a couple of years and have never once had any problems with it - I did take time to read through everything though to make absolutely sure I knew what each setting and option was going to do before I ran it - most of the time when I hear people saying it is bad software I find out later that they just plugged their phone in and clicked 'clean' then wondered why things were gone from their phones. The software will only clean what you tell it to, it's not the software at fault if you don't take time to use the correct settings.

I know the post is old but for future reference

THIS IS THE SOLUTION!!!

1. text, mail, in between other apps may take a huge chunk of space even if, for example "messages" are deleted completely, the problem is they are not. Here comes the "Saved messages" part: that phrase means that they have been temporarily delete from your phone but they are still stored somewhere (It can correlate to PC-Trash bin situation, were you delete an icon but they go to Trash bin before permanently deletion) In the iphone case, they go to a type of invisible list where the system know they are up for deletion but does not have a "authorized permission" to permanently delete. To resolve this, connect your phone to iTunes and Sync your phone. That sync between your phone and computer is that "authorized permission" i was talking about to permanently delete your text and free up space, also deleting document and data space. Take it slow, erase about 20-25 messages and sync, to make the sync process easier and faster for the computer to process.

I had almost half of my phones memory in saved messages (3GB) and i kept restoring phone and erasing all data but nothing, until I went digging further and further in some forums and found a similar explanation of what i just wrote.

For apps, you may find temporary solution by deleting and reinstalling the app. Documents and data increase from apps probably comes from constant updates to that same app. If you delete it and reinstall it, it was installed with the current update, while the older app moved "old updates" into an invisible trashcan in order to make space for the new update, and that invisible trash can is what I like to call Documents and data

For photos, you may want to try using apps such as Dropbox, which stream photos to your dropbox account you can also access from your computer, storing those photos safely in your computer. You can then delete them on your phone and repeat the "Sync process" explained above.

Any doubts, you can just message me.

RJ

This issue is constantly a struggle for me. I have turned off "Documents and Data" under Settings > General > iCloud and then deleted all ongoing Message conversations. I synced the phone, and I still show 5.8 GB of Messages under Settings >General > Usage. I cannot figure out any other way to get rid of these messages and free up this space. The phone is so full that I can't take a single picture. There is not space to store one more picture. PLEASE help. Any advice would be great.

Despite months and now years of requests, Apple has failed to restore the ability to limit the number of emails in iOS 7 & 8. (The fact that this pressures people to buy higher-memory, more expensive iPhones is no doubt an unfortunate coincidence.) So "documents and data" on my iPhone 5s (iOS 8.3) was quickly eating up the free space on the phone. The above suggestion worked, although I had to remember to "delete all" in the trash after deleting unwanted email messages. Moving messages to Junk Mail did not have the desired effect. Some were re-downloaded, so the phone does not appear able to learn to recognize junk. And I had to "delete all" in that mailbox too to recover space taken up by "documents and data." (I also limited the number of messages in my inbox on the server, to limit downloads, but that is a different story.)

I tried all of these solutions and gained nothing. So... I went into setting, deleted all of my email accounts (they were a pain anyway since I still had to go into the real account to delete my mail anyway) and I gained 2GB of usage data!!! I'm tired of deleting emails twice anyway. The convenience was nice but not enough to lose 2 GB!! Good luck everyone!

I have about 15GB of Documents & Data, but now that I think about it I'm pretty sure it's all in my Evernotes & Google docs. I have hundreds of documents there with tons of images attached in them. I'm still irritated apple doesn't provide a better breakdown of all storage on macs and iphones. I have this problem on my mac as well, 500 GB full yet i have no idea where all this space is. I've narrowed down about 250GB but the rest is unknown, and no giant files found, i deleted all big files such as videos. Seriously apple how hard is it to build this feature?

After I upgraded to iOS 9.3, I was frequently having storage space issue and the Documents & Data consumed 5.78GB. I tried deleting all my email accounts and all Document management apps like Box, SkyDrive, Google Docs etc., but the space usage didn't come down. I deleted most of the media in whatsapp and the space usage under Settings -> General -> Storage & iCloud Usage showed 603 MB towards Whatsapp. I was so frustrated.

I tried to get support from Apple and had a chat session. Interestingly they asked if I had whatsapp and suggested to update to the latest version (2.12.15+). I installed it but right away didn't see the usage coming down. Support suggested to wait for 24 hours and I was not happy. But within 10 minutes, I could see the Documents & Data went down to 1.4 GB and now I got back over 4GB of space.

I don't know if this helps anyone but... I had just over 6 gb of "Documents & Data." I realized after a bit that it was my Audible data and books. Audible didn't save under "Audio" it saved under documents and data.

I went thru this thread and did everything it said to do......I wiped my phone and it did not get rid of the HUGE documents and data amount. I dumped the pages documents. None of that worked., AFTER backing up to my mac, I manually deleted ALL of my messages. That immediately dropped documents and data to a tiny little amount and now my phone is FREE at last!!

ONE more thing about STORAGE. I kept on getting messages on my phone saying I had used up almost all of my storage. If you check in your data plan under the place where you can downgrade your plan it will show you how much data you are currently using. I was purchasing 1.0 TB of data storage for $9.99 a month for a couple of years without knowing this. My current usage was only 2 GB. DANG, the free plan provides for 5 GB !! That is $120/year savings. I suggest you go check it out. settings>icloud>storage>change storage plan> enter your apple id> now look above the new plan choices and there it will be written kinda small...just how much storage you are using. You are welcome.

I fixed it on mine.

I had 8 GB used in Documents and Data under Podcasts.

I went to iTunesU, and downloaded enough to fill the iPod. As it filled, the amount used in Documents and Data went down.

I then deleted the iTunesU stuff and it is at 45 MB and I have 17GB free on my 32GB Touch.

I had the same problem. 5.67 GB of space was being wasted and I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. I just went into my Podcasts (which I NEVER use/listen to) and turned OFF "sync podcasts" when my iPhone was connected to my laptop, and it magically freed up over 2GB of space. I also went into my phone and deleted any old podcasts that I listened to as they took up a huge chunk of space. Hope this helps!

This answer will vary depending on your IOS, I currently have 10.0.1 and this is how I cleared it:

1. Settings>General>Storage & iCloud Usage

2. Under "Storage" tap "Manage Storage", there you will view the apps that are taking the most space. In my case "Messages" was the issue if this is your case go all the way back to Settings and tap into "Messages" and go down to "Message History" and tap "Keep Messages" and change your settings to "30 Days" or "1 Year" anything older than that will be deleted. This same example should work with any other apple app