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

I had the same problem with my iPhone 6s+ with iOS 9.2. I "lost" 8GB in "documents and sync" in about 10 days without any obvious change in usage or settings.

I tried everything mentioned in this thread. At last it was the keychain sync. I disabled it on my MacBook, iPhone and iPad. Deleted some old entries in the Mac Keychain.app and restarted syncing with a fresh iCloud Keychain starting with the Mac then adding iPhone and iPad.

"Documents and Sync." used about 100k in the last two days...

I can't believe this has been going on for well over a year and still hasn't been fixed. My iPhone 6 is using over 1GB per hour! At $15 per GB now that I have blown through my 10GB data plan, this is no laughing matter. I am an attorney, and have learned that sometimes the only way to get someone to respond is to file a complaint with the court. I am seriously considering initiating a class action if this problem is as widespread and continuous as it seems to be. I am still going through the rest of the posts here, so maybe I will come across a fix, but if there is one, the Genius I got at the Apple store didn't have access to it. Her solution was to disable Cellular Data and Location Services completely and suggest that I wipe my 128GB phone and start from scratch reinstalling everything (not restoring from a backup). By the time I got everything back the way I have it, we would be up to the iPhone 9S.

What does keychain have to do with an iPhone? It isn't an iOS app. The data isn't available on an iPhone, so why would syncing it to iCloud or wherever have any impact on iPhone cellular data usage?

Julian, how many years have you been at the bar? If you are experienced you would know that it will take allot of time and money to get a suit going, and many months or years to get to a trial. Why don't you just shut off iCloud Drive and Keychain and let Apple work out this going on 2 year old problem. Thankfully this forum has helped plug the data drain for now. In the mean time, I think you'll get more help here with honey than by blowing off steam, even though it is a frustrating problem.

AS others have said turning iMac off will stop this data drain HOWEVER we all know how annoying this is; I have a workaround;

In power settings make sure "Enable Power Nap" is disabled. Once I disabled this I can keep my iMac ON and I won't have any drain.

Hope this helps people with this issue 🙂

Yes I deleted Pages form my iPhone 6S and the drain stopped...go figure

Beginning at the end of February 2016, I started seeing excessive data usage on both my iPad and my iPhone. I'm talking more than 500MB of usage per device per day. The weird thing is that I hardly ever use my iPad; usually, it just sits in my brief case. After spending the past three months troubleshooting and working with a senior consultant at Apple, I discovered that the problem had nothing to do with either iOS device. Instead, the problem was caused by one or more files on my MacBook Pro that, apparently, had a bad permissions setting. The solution was to reset the permissions on all the files in my Home folder on the MBP by following these instructions. I strongly recommend that anyone who is experiencing high data usage on an iOS device and who also has a Mac of some type try resetting permissions on the Mac. Please let me know whether this solution works for you.

I have had this problem with "Documents and sync" draining my data plan on my iPhone5s. As soon as I go outside without wifi connection my phone would quickly eat my entire data plan and also get very hot and drain the battery. I do not have a mac, but an iPad that is left at home connected to Wifi.

Following the steps to recreate the key chain helped me in this case.

However, I noted that as a side effect the autofill in Safari was turned off. Turning it back on will start the data drain again. I can now toggle the data draining by enabling or disabling autofill.

Posting this finding here just in case someone else have the same problem.

I have had this problem with "Documents and sync" draining my data plan on my iPhone5s. As soon as I go outside without wifi connection my phone would quickly eat my entire data plan and also get very hot and drain the battery. I do not have a mac, but an iPad that is left at home connected to Wifi.

Following the steps to recreate the key chain helped me in this case.

However, I noted that as a side effect the autofill in Safari was turned off. Turning it back on will start the data drain again. I can now toggle the data draining by enabling or disabling autofill.

Posting this finding here just in case someone else have the same problem.