Podcast Storage Mystery

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.

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

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 not surprised this is still a problem. Mine is at 5.5 gigs now with no signs of stopping and it's annoying as ****.

I can't believe the only solution is to delete all subs and format your phone and then hope your restore doesn't bring back the problem. It's terrible that they removed file access to the device because at least before you could go in manually to delete stuff.

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

cpk4: thanks for the suggestion. I tried this approach - I deliberately tried to overload my iPhone with music. It warned me that this wouldn't work, and I ignored the warning. There were a whole bunch of mid-sync restarts of the iPhone. And, this hasn't ended well. iTunes is now telling me my 64GB iPhone has either 5GB free, or is 5GB over capacity - and my iPhone is telling me that I have 30GB free. So iTunes thinks all the music is still there, but my iPhone now thinks there's only 2GB of music (rather than 30GB or so). Every further attempt to sync seems to proceed properly and takes all of ten seconds, but nothing actually changes, except that iTunes will toggle back and forth between the 5GB free / 5GB over capacity indicator. So, um, yeah. I think I'm heading for a restore from backup again.

Oh, and the Podcasts app? That's gone up from 2.8GB to 2.9GB.

So anyway, it didn't work for me, and I advise others to use this approach with caution, but it may be useful for others!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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 can't seem to find the 7.5 version. The only one that shows up for me is the 2.4. Is it called Battery Doctor?