iPad's free space differs between Settings and iTunes

Question

iPad's free space differs between Settings and iTunes

I have a 32Gb iPad Air running iOS8.4. It's pretty full, and when I synch with my MacBook Pro I carefully manage content to make sure I get the things I really want on there. But I am confused because the iPad tells me, in Settings/About/Available, that I have 437Mb available. However if connect it to iTunes on my Macbook Pro, it tells me, through the content bar at the foot of the page, that I have 1.91Gb free. Both sources tell me the overall capacity is 26.6Gb (I understand that 'real' capacity does not match the quoted capacity in the model name, that's not the issue here), so why would Settings give one figure for free space available, and iTunes another?

Posted on Jul 7, 2015 4:39 AM

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Answer 1

fbr$

Level 1

19 points

Jul 7, 2015 6:38 AM in response to Steven Carter

I'm not sure, my guess is that iOS settings shows the current available space on your iOS device, while iTunes shows the available space that your iOS device will have (yes, in the future, not in present) after you click on the Synch button.

So if the current iTunes library on your computer differs from the library that is already storaged on your iOS device, if you then click on the Synch button the library on your iOS device will change.

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Answer 2

Jul 7, 2015 6:46 AM in response to fbr$

Unfortunately the diff is still there after I synch.

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Answer 3

fbr$

Level 1

19 points

Jul 7, 2015 8:19 AM in response to Steven Carter

I just checked Settings on my iPad now, it shows 22.2 GB available. Connected to my computer, iTunes shows my iPad has 23.09 GB free. The difference is ~ 0.89 GB (multiplying it by 1024 = ~ 911.36 MB).

The colored bar on bottom of iTunes window shows, from left to right: Video (yellow), Documents & Data (green), Other (yellow).

Documents & Data = 914.3 MB, so here it's the difference.

It seems iTunes counts only yellow colored data.

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