iOS11 using so much storage

1. Make sure that you're using the latest version of iTunes.
2. If iTunes is already open, close it. Connect your device to your computer and open iTunes. If you don't have a computer, borrow one from a friend or go to an Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider for help.
3. While your device is connected, force restart it with these steps:
   • On an iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Then press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Finally, press and hold the Side button until you see the recovery-mode screen.
   • On an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold the Side and Volume Down buttons at the same time. Keep holding them until you see the recovery-mode screen.
   • On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad, or iPod touch: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons at the same time. Keep holding them until you see the recovery-mode screen.
     
4. When you see the option to Restore or Update, choose Update. iTunes will try to reinstall iOS without erasing your data. Wait while iTunes downloads the software for your device. If the download takes more than 15 minutes and your device exits recovery mode, let the download finish, then repeat these steps.
   
5. After the Update or Restore completes, set up your device.

I have the solution! You need to restore your phone using iTunes! A previous comment was close, but Apple Support had me do it slightly different.

1. Make sure that you're using the latest version of iTunes.
2. If iTunes is already open, close it. Connect your device to your computer and open iTunes. If you don't have a computer, borrow one from a friend or go to an Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider for help.
3. While your device is connected, force restartit with these steps:
   • On an iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Then press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Finally, press and hold the Side button until you see the recovery-mode screen.
   • On an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold the Side and Volume Down buttons at the same time. Keep holding them until you see the recovery-mode screen.
   • On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad, or iPod touch: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons at the same time. Keep holding them until you see the recovery-mode screen.
     
4. When you see the option to Restore or Update, choose RESTORE.
   
5. After the Restore completes, unplug your phone and set up your device.

I ssue solved,

I

had the same issue, where my iphone 7 running on iOS 11 was showing system files about 21.59GB. I was unable to backup on ICloud as not enough storage, I deleted everything for the cloud, pictures, other devices backups.. still no luck with back ups..

after many attempts for backups I managed to free enough space on my laptop to backup my device. Then I restored it directly from iTunes, then used the backup files to restore data.

What I discovered was that WhatsApp was the issue, it was having a bug and showing all WhatsApp data (pictures, videos and text) all were listed under system.

Then I went to WhatsApp and deleted all the unnecessary conversations in the chats, all media and there it was... boom.

Storage came down to less than 5GB.

Backup working perfectly fine..

Hope this note is helpfull..

Huye, you guys don’t seem to get it , Apple is doing this purposely ir order to make your iPhone obsolete. It’s also happening to me, on my iPhone 6s 16GB , the system uses around 7GB and I barely can use 4GB. They do this in order to make us ‘customers’ buy the new iPhones.It’s all about being unethical in order to make their business grow. We cannot do anything about it unless we as a community complain about it and get it over the media.

There are a few things you may do which will give your storage back temporarily:

1) reset your iPhone (clicking home button and sleep button)

2) make a back up copy with of your data and restore your iPhone on iTunes (this works but after certain it will be as before),then back up the copy.

This works and will give your storage back temporarily but as I said before Apple are golddiggers and see us as walking wallets. They want to make previous devices useless to buy the new ones. I have evidence , they did exactly the same thfing to the older iPhones, deliberately slowing them down so people were forced to buy new ones.

How is this possible??? The systems section is taking up almost 80 GB? Isn’t that too much for updates? Please help me to sort this out, I’d really appreciate it.

Hi,

Please can you help me? This is happening to me too and I do not have enough space to run an update even after deleting almost everything on my phone.

I cannot go into an Apple store as I live remotely so if someone could contact me to help me I would be so greatful.

Thank You

Hello, I have the same problem with my iPhone 6s. I tried to restore to the factory defaults and reinstalled iOS several times. Unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem, in a few days, the system storage has filled all memory. Do you have another solution?

Hi,

Just go to WhatsApp, setting, storage usage, then you wil notice that there are huge media files.. u can delete all unnecessary media and for me I managed to clear a lot I think more than 15GB..

Once done you will be able to back again

Hi, thanks for the reply. I know about this trick, but it does not help me. I have already deleted all media content in Whatsapp storage. Today I restored my iPhone and will try installing less of applications in next few days. If it'll happen again I will tell here.

So, my system storage increased from 4.5 Gb to 14.2Gb in one day after I restored my iPhone... Whatsapp doesn't have any media data in the storage, I cleared it all.

I think it a bug in iOS11 because I found many complaints from users on the Internet. Any new suggestions?

They won't be able to sort your issue unless you contact the support people. If everyone's iPhone was at that level of system storage they could do so but that is not the case. Call them or take it in.

Yeh I have the same problem I installed iOS on my iPad when it first came out and I checked how much storage it was taking up and it said 2gb so I thought that was ok but in the past two weeks I have been getting your storage is full alerts and I went into settings to check what it was and it said the system was taking up 19gb of storage and I don’t know what to do

I have the same problem, System is 78 GB. I just did what was recommended here by i_rina, it went down only by 2 GB. I'm still searching for a solution. It is a 256 GB iphone that fills up so easily, pffff

I went to Apple genious bar to ask this, they told me to delete my iphone and reinstall all the apps manually rather than through the back-up. I did that, and it solved the problem but it takes a lot of time to download the apps, organize them, set everything the way you like them on your phone, etc.