Podcast Storage Mystery

I'm going to pile on this one and make a recommendation. I want to be clear that I am in no way associated with Apple, or any app developer.

Memory and Disk Scanner Pro (LINK)

Pros: Fixes this problem right quick. Freed up almost 6GB on my iPod touch 16GB (v9.3.2)

Can be set to automatically scan your disk your memory or both.

Seems to make my iPod run a bit better. (Could be the placebo effect.)

Works with iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

Doesn't try to access any of your information or give you notifications.

Cheap! $0.99

Free to try.

Cons: Last updated in November of 2014.

This developer has a number of utilities in the app store that all seem to do the same basic things, with different front ends. Some of them have been updated more recently. But this one is 99 cents. Can't beat it.

OK, yeah - I think you've done all you can. I've read that restoring an iPhone as new can get rid of most of that Documents & Data - in my case, yes, it got rid of most of it, but I think that was dropping it from 3GB down to 400MB or so anyway (i.e. to your level now!), and it quickly climbed back up again.

I'm curious what'll happen if you just don't download another podcast. Will the memory go down over the next week?

For what it's worth, I moved to Overcast a couple of days ago and have entirely emptied out any podcasts in the Podcasts app, with no more podcasts coming in. There's nothing there now. Documents & Data for the Podcasts app has dropped all the way from 3.0GB to 2.9GB. I'm curious if that'll drop any further over the next few days as caches or whatever may or may not get emptied.

Well for me it's been three weeks since I wiped everything out of the Podcasts app and moved to Overcast, and Documents & Data is still 2.8GB, so I think I can assume it's not some kind of temporary cache issue that'll gradually run down.

It'd be nice if 9.2 would fix this, but it was a problem back in iOS8 too.

And yeah, on a 16GB phone that problem is awful. At least I've got a 64GB.

Nope. I reported this bug directly to Apple but I haven't heard from them yet. Maybe we all should report this bug... hopefully they will take it more seriously. This is the link: Bug Reporting - Apple Developer - https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/

I think I've read elsewhere that the only fix is to restore the device and leave the Podcasts app alone, its really odd as I've stopped using the app and turned off sync but it still periodically decreases and increases the amount of storage its using.

I'll file a report as you suggest but I wouldn't expect a response anytime soon.

My Podcasts app is still taking up 2.8GB of non-deletable "Documents & Data", and that's five or six weeks after I entirely abandoned the Podcasts app in favor of Overcast. There was a small drop from 3.0GB in the first few days, but since then the memory consumed hasn't changed at all. A restore from backup changed nothing. I haven't done a factory restore yet because that's so much darn hassle.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH, keithburton16!

The documents and data went down to 95 MB after being on 4.1 GB for quite some time now. I ran the Junk clean function in Battery doctor around 10 times, and nothing happened the first 9 times regarding the podcaster cache, but suddenly it was almost completely erased. Now I have unsubscribed to all podcasts in this piece-of-crap-app. It will never be opened again. Time to try another podcast app instead.

Again, thank you! You saved my day!

With best regards,

Henrik Svensson

Thnaks cpk4

This tips unsubscribe, delete and "overload" until "out of memory" was the solution !

It´s obvious that apple have a bug in their podcaster app regarding memory handling and also lack of support in how to empty storage for this app.

I Had no podcasts on my 8gb iPhone 5c and the podcasts app was using 1gb. I upgraded to 9.3 last night and although the problem is only partially solved , it is now only usin 500gb I have a bit more headroom space on the phone.

That's unfortunate that the newer version of Battery Doctor removed the "Junk" feature. The older version of Battery Doctor (2.4.10) still has the "Junk" feature and it continues to work. This version isn't available for download via the AppStore anymore, so don't delete it if you have it!

Now that iOS 10 allows you to delete the Podcasts app, you can do that occasionally if junk continues to grow.

I am happy to hear this has helped. Using the Battery Doctor app has given new life to my 16GB iPad and iPhone. The iPad got more than 3GB of space back!

I had to run it 10 or 15 times. Try closing the apps and restarting the phone as well before running it.

Well, when I was still using the Podcasts app, Documents & Data was 3.0GB. After I wiped out all podcasts from the app, it dropped to 2.9GB. Now, a week later, with nothing coming in or out of the app, it's dropped further - to 2.8GB! So at this rate it should go away in six months or so.

When I have a day when I'll be staying near my computer I'll try to restore from a backup, but last time I did that it wound up taking a big chunk of the day, so I'm not too eager to go through it again. It is rather irksome that an app I no longer even use is taking up the second-most space of any app on my iPhone - only Music has more.