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iPad storage filling up when watching videos over wifi.

Every time I watch a video over wifi instead of downloading it first it uses some of my system storage... And it never goes away. I literally just whittle away at my full storage until I have to restore the iPad in order to watch anything. Is there a way to delete the iPads temporary video cache? Or is there some other explanation?

iPad Mini, iOS 8.3

Posted on May 5, 2015 4:47 PM

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Posted on May 5, 2015 6:11 PM

taylordm wrote:


Or is there some other explanation?

Yes there is. You think that you are streaming the videos because you see the cloud icon and you think that tapping on that begins the streaming process. That's what most people think. What you are really doing is downloading the movie to the iPad. That cloud icon simply means that the movie is in your iTunes in the cloud purchased account. When you tap the cloud, you start the download.


When you do this, make sure that you totally download the movie and after that you will be able to delete it. If you end the movie with even 30 seconds left, you will not be able to delete it from the iPad. It must completely download before you can delete it.

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Question marked as Best reply

May 5, 2015 6:11 PM in response to taylordm

taylordm wrote:


Or is there some other explanation?

Yes there is. You think that you are streaming the videos because you see the cloud icon and you think that tapping on that begins the streaming process. That's what most people think. What you are really doing is downloading the movie to the iPad. That cloud icon simply means that the movie is in your iTunes in the cloud purchased account. When you tap the cloud, you start the download.


When you do this, make sure that you totally download the movie and after that you will be able to delete it. If you end the movie with even 30 seconds left, you will not be able to delete it from the iPad. It must completely download before you can delete it.

May 6, 2015 8:28 AM in response to taylordm

Sorry to take so long to get back to you, but I wanted to experiment and be able to verify what I am saying. From what I can tell, only music videos can be deleted without totally downloading them to the device. I Tapped on a movie that I had in the cloud and let it play for a few minutes. Then I went and check the settings and the storage left on my iPad dropped. I close the movie, tapped the Edit button in the Movies Tab of the videos app and I was not able to delete the movie, I had to totally download it before it would delete.

When I tap on a movie icon for a a movie that is in the cloud, it begins to load right away. The only way to get to that arrow button is to start the movie, and then tap Done. The. The next time that you tap on the live it takes you to the screen where you see the arrow and the download icon. Even if I tapped the arrow icon, it still started to download to the iPad.

May 6, 2015 8:35 AM in response to Demo

I found a little glimmer of hope in that if you start watching a movie that isn't downloaded and then quit watching it... an "edit" button appears in the top right hand corner of the library page for movies, tv shows, whatever. When you click the edit button a tiny X appears at the corner of the movie you started to download. That lets you delete the temporary storage of it.


So with that in mind it seems like apple allows 2 ways to download a movie. Either by clicking on the cloud icon and thus starting the download process in which you can then swipe to delete at a later date. Or just clicking play and then using the edit button to delete.


I noticed that when i clicked the edit button a few movies I had started to watch in the past few months showed as available to be deleted... my iPad has since gone back up to 18gigs available instead of what it was showing... 12gigs... and without describing what was actually taking up that 14gigs of space.


Thanks for your help.

iPad storage filling up when watching videos over wifi.

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