iOS 8.2 swallowing all available storage space

I've got an iPhone 5S with 16GB storage, and updated to iOS 8.2 the other day. Since yesterday, I've been noticing that the available storage on my phone is persistently at 0 bytes, and 'used'' is at 12GB. I know full well that the whole 16GB isn't available for the user, and 12GB is about right, but what I can't understand is that when I managed to upload a load of photos to Dropbox, then delete them from my photos gallery, it shows an amount of free space for a short while, then that disappears. It's the same with Apps, I've deleted a couple of large apps of 100MB+, but the available space is 0 bytes.

I've even uploaded a huge batch of photos to Dropbox, deleted them from 'photos', and from deleted items, and confirmed that the usage showed 2.9GB available space. An hour later, I try to upload another batch to dropbox, and it crashes repeatedly because something has swallowed that 2.9GB already.

When I go into Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage, it shows I have about 1.6GB of photos and the sum total of every other app listed is somewhere in the region of 1.5GB. This includes a total of 153MB of music. I don't sync any videos.

So what on earth can fill up nearly 3GB storage in an hour when there are no apps open?

Posted on Mar 12, 2015 5:06 AM

24 replies

Mar 29, 2015 2:56 AM in response to LaurenceMadill

Exact same issue for me. 64 gb iPhone 6 running iOS 8.2. Out of nowhere got this message so I backed up all of 12 gb of my photos to my MacBook Pro and deleted them from my phone. Phone worked perfectly the next four days maybe and now I'm back to zero bytes available. As you might've guessed, I didn't take 12gb of photos within a 4 day period. I was relieved at least knowing that originally I wasn't out of storage, but come on Apple get it together. there is very clearly a problem here.

Mar 29, 2015 3:13 PM in response to LaurenceMadill

I'm having the same issue. iphone6 64GB and 36GB are being taken up by "other". It all happened after I updated to iOS 8.2. I can't restore from backup because there isn't enough space. So, I delete things from my phone only to have that space immediately disappear so I still can't do a restore. Help! My phone is basically useless.

Mar 31, 2015 12:43 PM in response to LaurenceMadill

I'm sorry that I updated to 8.2. The phone is slower, it often freezes and yesterday all my photos mysteriously disappeared. The photos somehow slowly started to reappear with a "restoring" message. However, all the photos are out of chronological order. A real mess. Just out of warranty on my phone as well. I'm very frustrated.

skr829

Level 1

0 points

Mar 31, 2015 12:53 PM in response to skr829

I did a chat support with Apple the other day, and they helped me through doing a restore.

Restore is complete, and now I have several more GB of space. Phone works great now with 8.2.

Mar 31, 2015 8:50 PM in response to skr829

Can you elaborate on how the restore went? Any specific steps?

And any updates on how well it works.

Apr 1, 2015 6:37 AM in response to mjmahon623

I too did what a few people have on this thread and called Apple Support who suggested I restore the phone. I backed everything up (which in it of itself requires space, so there's a bit of a catch 22), went to restore iPhone in iTunes, and once that was done I restored from my backup. Voila, the "other" space was completely gone and I magically had 45 gb of free space, as expected.

Chris CA

Level 10

82,908 points

Apr 1, 2015 6:46 AM in response to mjmahon623

mjmahon623 wrote:

I too did what a few people have on this thread and called Apple Support who suggested I restore the phone. I backed everything up (which in it of itself requires space, so there's a bit of a catch 22),

To backup your iPhone, it requires space on your computer, not the iPhone so it's not a catch-22.

Apr 20, 2015 7:01 AM in response to LaurenceMadill

SSame issue here after 8.3 update.

amiteis

Level 1

0 points

Jul 18, 2015 10:01 AM in response to LaurenceMadill

This problem happened to me twice. I have an iPhone 5s with 16GB and I did fill it up with photos and apps. When I started deleting things (photos and apps), free space was still at 0. What I did was close all apps, close all open tabs in Safari and clear the Safari cache, restart the iPhone a few times... Eventually the free space started showing up again and I got 500 MB back.

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iOS 8.2 swallowing all available storage space