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Level 1

5 points

With new iOS 7, video streaming takes up phone's capacity

I noticed that with the new iOS, your videos (movies, television shows, music videos) are readily available to stream in the Videos app. But whenever you stream the video, it actually takes up storage in your iPhone. Everytime a video is being watched, your available storage capacity in your phone keeps on getting decreased quite significantly. And there's no way to delete the storage it's taking up, I think whenever a video is being streamed, the streaming file is being kept under the "Others" category because when you plug your phone ito iTunes, the "Others" section shows a huge amount of storage being taken up. Has anybody seen the same thing? And if so, is there a fix to this problem? Because my storage capacity is diminishing everytime I stream a video and the whole point of streaming a video is to NOT have it take up space in my phone's hard drive memory but unfortunately, it is taking up space in my phone's memory. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated or maybe Apple is coming up with a solution hopefully.

iPhone 5, iOS 7.0.2

Posted on Nov 1, 2013 9:30 PM

79 replies

hexonxonx

Level 4

2,477 points

Feb 23, 2014 11:38 PM in response to VitalyScherbo

True. The cache builds up when you use iTunes Match and iTunes Radio as well. Everything Apple does that invlves streaming has this problem.

Feb 23, 2014 11:43 PM in response to hexonxonx

Yeah absolutely :( Even watching videos on web browsers consumes space as I experienced.

Feb 24, 2014 7:56 AM in response to VitalyScherbo

Does the web browser cache also dump its data into the CloudAssets folder? If so, at least everything that needs to be periodically flushed can be flushed from one location, rather than having to hunt for different files in different locations.

A permanent fix to this would be nice.

Feb 27, 2014 7:14 PM in response to iKnock

I also endorse iBrowse (http://www.ibrowseapp.com/)

I just downloaded it and in a few minutes recovered 6GB of my iPad storage.

In addition to looking in iCloudAssets, I also blew away the contents of the download folder.

I've been downloading iTunes Movies (Purchased Movies) from iCloud and I suspect I had a few aborted downloads there that didn't get cleaned out.

This post made my day! Thanks iKnock and gnprice!!!

Mar 5, 2014 4:29 AM in response to Louie0722

Hi,

I had the same issue with iOS 7 on both; iPhone and iPad, but I managed to resolve that by deleting the video from 'Usage' section in settings. Settings-General-Usage, wait for the list to populate, then go into Movies and delete any videos. It will note remove your purchase from iCloud - only cached copies.

Tremolux

Level 1

10 points

Mar 29, 2014 8:14 AM in response to Desmond-London

I also found this solution on my iPhone 5S; piece of cake once I located it. Since I'm only streaming one TV series, I was able to reclaim all the space by deleting the series at the top level under Videos; freed up ~ 10GB in one fell swoop.

Kind of shocking that Apple support wasn't pointing people to this Settings feature.

nathanjm

Level 1

4 points

Mar 29, 2014 8:44 AM in response to Tremolux

Had a similar issues on my iPad. Fixed it by turning off "Show All Videos". Then went into the Videos app which showed an expired iTunes Movie Rental which immediately deleted itself and freed up 4GB of space!

Has anyone seen this issue re-occurring after upgrading to iOS 7.1?

hexonxonx

Level 4

2,477 points

Mar 29, 2014 8:46 AM in response to nathanjm

Yes, it still happens.

Tremolux

Level 1

10 points

Mar 29, 2014 9:09 AM in response to hexonxonx

Knowing what I know now, it seems to me that retaining cached content isn't a bug so much as a [mis]feature. Apple should add a setting that limits/disables long-term caching of streamed content, however.

(That, and bring the support people up to speed on how to delete cached content, i.e., using Edit under Settings > General > Usage > Videos [or other app].)

hexonxonx

Level 4

2,477 points

Mar 29, 2014 9:17 AM in response to Tremolux

I agree that it's not a bug but simply the way Apple intended streaming to work. It's just not very well implemented as you say.

Mar 29, 2014 9:34 AM in response to nathanjm

Well actually.....after 7.1 came out I experimented and streamed segments of a couple of my movies. So far it does not appear that any memory was taken up with the streams. I watched 5-10 minutes of video....so that much memory should have shown up on my usage meter.

jfaughnan

Level 3

871 points

Mar 29, 2014 5:09 PM in response to gregoryfromwinnipeg

7.1 fixed this bug for all five devices in my family. (It was definitely a bug, not a misguided feature.)

Mar 30, 2014 8:27 PM in response to Louie0722

Very easy solution. I had the same problem. In iTunes and App store in my General Settings I signed out of my Apple ID then signed back in. That freed up all the memory that was taken up by movies or tv shows in video. I just regained my missing 12GB of memory.

Timckin

Level 1

0 points

Mar 31, 2014 12:44 PM in response to Kristen240

Thank you so much! I found all my lost memory!!!

Jun 25, 2014 11:37 AM in response to Louie0722

Worked for me (iPad Air, iOS 7.1.1):

Either solution works. I prefer the first because even though it is cumbersome, the latter involves loss of all data on the device.

Reopen the video, skip to the end of the video and let it play all the way out. (thanks, user rlmonera!)
Restore device to factory settings. Removes everything on the device. (pointed out by user Jefferson590 et al)

Did not work for me:

Update to iOS 7.1 (jfaughnan)
Sign out of Apple ID then sign back in. (Kristen240)
In Settings, turn off "Show All Videos". Then go to the Videos app which shows expired iTunes Movie Rentals which immediately deletes itself (nathanjm)
In Settings —> General —> Usage, open the «video» app, you can then swipe to delete the data/cache. (ashleyegret)
You can delete the streamed video by swiping left-right on the episode (mspears)
Delete the series at the top level under Videos (Tremolux)
Finally, as user riow pointed out, reboot (both normal and hard reset) is of no use.

With new iOS 7, video streaming takes up phone's capacity