Cellular data drain (iOS 8.1.1) with "Documents & Sync"

Obviously did that first - did ALL of that - the drain was happening IN SPITE of every conceivable toggle forcing WiFi to be used, being activated! Nothing mattered, data was being burnt regardless.

Creating a new iCloud account is the only thing that worked. Everything else did nothing.

In my case (ios 8.3) i've solved this issue by switching off Keychain on my macmini (10.10.3).

I erase all on my macbook disk and install OS X 10.10 again. Now my iDevices not consuption cellular data.

Hi,

Just wanted to weigh in here as I have the same problem but on a seemingly massive scale. Yesterday, for the first time ever, my iPhone 5 ate through 1GB of data in 3 hours! 988MB was the same documents and sync feature. The interesting thing is, I don't have a Mac or any other device using my iCloud! I had an iPad that was stolen last year in June, but that's it. I was connected to wifi the whole time this was happening. Turned off the use data feature on icloud Documents & Data setting and am seriously hoping this fixes the issue as I cannot afford more data, here in South Africa data is preposterously expensive and Wifi is only available at my office and not at home. Will update if this problem persists.

This is my two cents.

This problem started about a week for me. My data plan was up.

I never came close to my limit of 4GB previously, but it was close to end of the month, and I had just bought an iPad that shares data plan with my iPhone.

So, waiting for a important email and not able to connect to any Wifi, I bought another 1GB.

Well, the next day, it was up again!

Working in video, and sharing dropbox folders with clients I figured Dropbox synced some videos and used my cellular data.

So I denied dropbox for cellular data.

Still waiting for the important email, I bought another 1GB. The next day it was a new month, and I figured my problem was "solved" having denied dropbox.

2 days in my new quota of 4GB I had exceeded my data plan once again!

Denying Dropbox cellular access was obviously not the solution.

Looking in the settings I found Documents & Sync having used up 3,4 GB - in two days!

So. In the settings for cellular data / iCloud drive - there's still another Dropbox button turned on.

I turned it of, and for the last two days I used close to 5MB of cellular data in "System services".

FYI, a couple of weeks ago I started to upload my photos to iCloud Photo Library.

I had the setting "automatic camera uploads" turned on in my Dropbox app, as that's how I stored photos before iCPL.

So, now I turned camera uploads of in dropbox, as I'm starting to think it created some kind of loop, grabbing photos from iCPL and uploading them to dropbox.

Obviously not a solution for everybody as all of you don't have Dropbox installed, but maybe something for someone.

I've recently been hit with this too. I recently installed Google Photos but that appears to play well with WiFi although I've now disabled access to mobile for that. I've also gone into iCloud -> iCloud Drive and unchecked Use Mobile Data. I may turn off WWDC, WH Quest and KAYAK as they're the newest apps I've installed in iCloud. My data resets on the 4th so I'll monitor data for Documents & Sync and see if I can narrow down which App is using the data.

If only this was an actual path, it might work but I don't find a place in icloud settings to turn off documents and sync for cellular?

That toggle must be new, I'm on 8.3. So far my data use has been ok since turning off "Use Mobile Data".

Where is this toggle though, i'm on 8.3 and don't see it.. wish I could have used it since turning off icloud wipes all the apple pay details completely.

I find the solutions for this to unacceptable and/or cumbersome.

I'd like to chime in to say that I am having this problem with iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 (latest public betas for each; iPhone 5s for the former and a 2008 15" unibody MBP for the latter). It feels like this problem only started within the last 10 days.

I can't provide any scientific proof, but when I shut down all cellular options (but leave "Cellular Data" on so that I can still get phone calls), and Documents & Sync still plows through data... Something is wrong.

This is particularly significant for me because I only have a 200 MB data plan. I still have several days in my billing cycle and, at the rate this is going, I will go over that limit a SECOND time this month.

I have, for the moment, resorted to disabling cellular entirely or using airplane mode as often as possible. I really do not want to go through the process of creating a new iCloud account. Also, I suspect that will not suffice in the long term -- the problem will undoubtedly resurface.

Apple needs to figure this out and fix it ASAP. If we're all correct -- that this is a software issue pushing excessive amounts of data -- I would think that Apple would risk lawsuits. The posts here (and on other sites) show that this issue costs people money.

When you sign up and start using beta software, any problems may occur, and you accept the risk for such problems.

There is certainly no guarantee that beta software works. If you want working software, drop out of the beta programs.

Trust me, I'm well aware of that. And no, I have no desire to drop out of the beta program after experience an issue that people on older versions of iOS are also experiencing. I would not call the issue being discussed in this thread a problem/risk unique to the iOS 9 beta.

Also, I did not say that the software does not work. In general, I have not had any issues with the iOS 9 beta. So let's focus on the topic.

Hello

i also was hit big with this document consuming data without me even using the phone. And for at least last 12 hours my document data used zero data.

all I did was turn off gmail's note syncing function in settings. iPhone's note app synced with gmail account and perhaps that was the problem.

Steps: settings ->Mails, contacts, calendar-> gmail -> and toggle off note.

Also to be sure, setting -> notes. Check on default iPhone note. Gmail as default option will disappear Anyway.

WARNING.

the notes that's not on iPhone but rather in gmail account will be deleted with ur approval while turning this off. But note will still be there in ur gmail account.

SO far zero data on documents and sync for about 12 hours. Hope this fixes it for good.

I have the exact same problem as everybody here. I never had any problems with my data limit of 500MB and suddenly in 1 day it was empty! Documents & Sync was skyhigh something like 600MB. This happened twice to me in the last month or so.

Lately I am struggling with the 16GB limit on my iPhone 6... I almost daily get notifications that data storage is full or almost full so I deleted quite some pictures. But I also have enabled "upload to iCloud library". I think it has something to do with this.

I just deleted (again) quite some few pictures to free up some space. I have reset my (cellular) statistics. I will report back in coming days.

It would be nice if Apple made a 'only do upload to iCloud library' when on wifi and/or do "documents & sync" only when on wifi.

It does have this option for "upload to my photo stream".

By the way I always update to latest iOS version within a week or so.

Well, it seems like it Didn't work. 18 hours and already document increased in 40 mb. I'm seriously considering to stop using iPhone. Which is the last thing I would want to do.

it seems like my document is averaging daily 60mb per day. So that's like just below 2gig of data per month which I didn't technically use. And this brings up question of some ppl with 500mb data plan. This is ridiculous.