Podcast Storage Mystery

I found a solution that helped! I had the same problem as you - over 1GB in "Documents and Data" in the Podcasts app.

Copy over a bunch of music or other content - enough that it fills up all the space on your phone, including all the space that should be freed from the podcasts Documents+Data. The phone will automatically clear out that space in order to fit all the music. You should get an "out of space" warning as the phone is completely full. Then delete those songs and the unused space from Podcasts is restored. Finally!!! Restored over 1GB of space from the Podcasts app.

Found the answer from this thread - Re: Storage data different on iPhone and iTunes

Go to the iPhone's Settings, choose General, and then choose "Storage & iCloud Usage". Then select "Manage Storage", which should list all the apps. Then select "Podcasts". What I see (iPhone 5, iOS 9.0.2) is two sections: "Podcasts", with the different podcasts and memory allocation listed, and below that "Documents & Data." The top part is editable - you can erase podcasts from it, although it just gives you the title of the podcast "series", not the individual episode. I occasionally find episodes that should be gone still in there, so I erase them; it also includes the ones that you've played in the past 24 hours, but haven't been deleted yet, because for whatever reason Apple doesn't wipe them for another 24 hours. If you want to wipe out all podcasts, you can do it there.

But then there's the second section, "Documents & Data." Mine is 2.9GB and growing - annoying but not critical on my 64GB phone. On 16GB it'd be infuriating. As far as I can tell there is nothing you can do about that. Some people report that it goes down once in a while, but I've never noticed that; once I did a full restore and got it down to a few hundred MB, but it quickly grew to multiple GB again. At least now it's no longer growing as quickly.

I had this problem with 1.5GB and growing in the Podcasts app leaving me with 200Mb of space on the device.

I downloaded the Battery Doctor app (the latest one at version 7.5 not the abandoned 2.x one) and aggressively ran the Clean Up Cache function on the Junk app. Running it aggressively means doing it over and over again. Open the Podcasts app first, run the Clean Up Cache and this DOES WORK.

I now have 2.5GB free and the Podcasts app is down to 400Mb which is the downloaded files only.

Good news for everyone that has been dealing with this issue - iOS 10 has a new feature that help resolve the Podcasts storage problem.

One thing you can now do in iOS 10 is 'delete' stock apps from your device. It doesn't really delete the app, but it deletes the icon link from the apps and it also *removes associated data and configuration files!* This means that deleting the Podcasts app will also delete the huge data file.

Once removed, the Podcasts app can just be readded from the App Store, and the settings are instantly restored from your iCloud account.

I tested this out and regained over 1GB of lost space.

I too did manage to solve this issue and free almost 5GB of space (Podcasts - Documents and Data). All I did was to force feed my iPhone via iTunes with music tracks. I simply ignored the warning about storage being almost full and like cpk4 and others on this thread the apps started displaying "cleaning" and when it finally got to Podcasts.app the storage on my iPhone started increasing very fast (despite the fact that songs were being uploaded onto the iPhone. I think iTunes sees the free storage space but the iPhone does not. Hope it works for you all as well!

I Did the "overload with music" approach and it worked. I had to start the sync many times. It told me many times it couldn't sync because there was no space left. Then I checked another album to sinc and suddenly it would have another few 100 my left. This went on for a few syncs and then the 2 gb from the podcast app were gone. I think I'm finished, but will continue to try and see if there are more apps that need some freedom from hidden cashes. I don't think the podcast app was the only one, because iTunes sometimes mentioned a free space of 5 gb instead of the 2 taken by the podcast app. If you want to try this approach remember to take a few hours to sync and sync and sync and don't give up when it tells you it's full.

Interesting - totally different results from what I experienced, but great that it's worked out for you. I was syncing with a cable, if that makes a difference.

But my problem is now solved! After all those crashes my phone was so messed that I did the "Restore iPhone", and that got rid of the stupid wasted memory!

Note: about a month ago I did the Restore from Backup from iTunes, and that did NOT solve the problem - it didn't change the memory consumption at all. I was avoiding the full restore because (1) last time I did that, around six months ago, it took weeks for me to get everything set back up (different apps kept needing passwords that were only recorded on my computer at home), and (2) the problem with Podcasts Documents & Data came back anyway within a couple of weeks. However, this time I did Restore iPhone, and then it gives you the option to full reset or restore from backup - I chose the latter, so getting my phone back to normal was a lot more straightforward than I feared, and to my surprise it made the Documents & Data go away. I don't really understand why restoring the iPhone, and then choosing to restore from the backup, behaves differently than just restoring from backup (shouldn't it be the same thing?!), but so be it.

And now that I don't use the Podcasts app at all, I hope the Documents & Data won't balloon again.

TLDR: if you're no longer using the Podcasts app, Restore iPhone, and then choose to restore from a backup. That got rid of the extra Documents & Data for Podcasts for me. But if you're still using the Podcasts app, be warned that the memory may go up again.

I Was having the same issue but worse. I had 4.2 GB in podcast but no downloaded podcasts. Not the first time I had this happen. Last time I did a restore.

THis time after reading above suggestions, I downloaded overcast resolved to stop using podcast app. I setup all podcast subscriptions on overcast and then deleted all on podcast. Then I connected to iTunes deleted all podcasts on iTunes, and the selected sync podcast. i did a sync, still showed low memory on iPad, but iTunes showed I had unused 5GB. Then i started adding entire music library and syncing, this force the podcast app to show cleaning...

after i I removed all the music and now have 5Gb unused.

i plan to stop using podcast hoping issue does not come back.

Yeah, I erased and unsubscribed to everything I could six or seven weeks ago, and switched to Overcast. And now Apple's Podcast app takes up "only" 2.8GB of storage - the biggest storage allotted to any of the apps on my device except for music! Not bad for an app that has no content and is never used.

I'm sorry to hear that. I did what "cpk4" suggested and it worked. I transferred almost 2GB of music to my iPhone (it only had 200MB left!). The iPhone complained about space the syncing kept going. I noticed some apps started to go into a "Cleaning" (look at Twitter app below) mode. I think the synchronization forced the iOS to reclaim unused/cached data.

Now, the Podcast app is only using 17MB and I got my almost 2GB space back. What a relieve. 🙂

I reported these finds backs to Apple. Hopefully, they will sort this out.

In the future, everyone will have 1TB storage on their smartphones. (Unfortunately, iOS will then need 500GB.)

I eventually switched players, but when I used the built-in Podcast app, I would periodically just delete everything. (I'd be happy to delete the app itself, if they would let you do that.) So, unsubscribe, delete all downloads, etc. Close the app. Shut off the machine. Start over.

This would recover several GB of my nominal 16GB.

HTH.

Bruce

At first, the remedies previously suggested didn't work for me. However, if you repeat the process of filling your storage, it will eventually free up tons of cached storage.

I was able to quickly repeat this process by using an app such as Battery Doctor by KS Mobile Inc. -- http://www.cmcm.com/en-us/battery-doctor/ (which doesn't seem to be available anymore in the US app store). These apps essentially allocate / write arbitrary file to disk forcing the OS to purge cached files. The movie download trick should work as well but downloading repeatedly would be time consuming...find an app that does this.

Note on these "Battery Doctor" apps, their EULAs are a bit suspect since they basically say that China's laws govern usage of the app. They also seem to use IP geo-location to enable the memory cleaner.

I've moved to Overcast too, removed everything form Podcasts and still have 607MB of storage. The current versions iOS 9.1 (13B143) still haven't fixed this issue. Looking forward for a fix.

The saga continues: I restored from a backup today, and the Documents & Data for Podcasts is still taking up 2.8GB, even though it's now been almost two weeks since I erased every podcast and turned off all subscriptions. So restoring from a backup apparently does nothing to get rid of that Documents & Data stuff.

I guess that means my next tactic will be a factory reset, if I really care about getting those 2.8GB back. Ugh.

(The restore from backup isn't hassle-free either: at least it only took 30 minutes, but now for some reason iTunes can't see my Photos library, and only wants to sync pictures from iPhoto, and all the pictures I'd synced are gone.)

Just wanted to comment that the battery doctor worked for my iphone as well. It took running the junk clean function about 20 times, but it finally cleared the documents and data in the POS Podcast app that I no longer use. It will run sometimes and say it found nothing to remove, and then the next time it finds quite a bit. So, be patient. And, if you are a podcast listener, do not hesitate to switch to Overcast. I love it. So, so much better than Apple's app. I listen to some podcasts on 1.5 speed, and there is really no distortion. Voices sound the same, just a little sped up. Background music can get a bit wonky, but if you have a lot you enjoy, it helps keep you from getting behind. Really, everything is better, save maybe for the search function. Also, it seems there is sometimes a bit of a delay before podcasts show up in Overcast. Not by a lot. I listen to the Dan Patrick Show every week day, and I think each hour hits the Podcast app 20-30 minutes before it shows up in Overcast. Not a big deal.