iPhone SE (2022) Need To Clear Space: Documents & Data

[Christopher11]

Hello friends in iPhone. My SE 2020 is 22 GB over capacity, so i want to clear a lot of it. The bulk of this is "Documents & Data", which is 82 GB! I want to clear almost all of it. Can you please share how you would do this? I tried going to iCloud as a google search suggested, but that's only 5GB worth of stuff. I want to clear the documents & data. Thank you in advance for any help.

 

[beach bum]

When you say ‘clear’ the data, do you want to delete the data or off-load? Is there any way for you to off-load the unwanted data to your MBP or an external storage drive? Or, for a $2.99 monthly fee—I think, increase your iCloud storage.

 

[now i see it]

Go to:
Settings > General > iPhone Storage

Then scroll down and see what’s taking up all the space.
Also the Files App is a link to both your local storage and iCloud.
Poke around in there and you’ll see all the stuff you’ve got stashed.

 

[Christopher11]

When you say ‘clear’ the data, do you want to delete the data or off-load? Is there any way for you to off-load the unwanted data to your MBP or an external storage drive? Or, for a $2.99 monthly fee—I think, increase your iCloud storage.When I write clear I mean delete it.

 

[Christopher11]

Go to:
Settings > General > iPhone Storage

Then scroll down and see what’s taking up all the space.
Also the Files App is a link to both your local storage and iCloud.
Poke around in there and you’ll see all the stuff you’ve got stashed.

Thank so much. Will do. I'm there now, but it's 'calculating category sizes'. Looks like it may take a few minutes. Once it shows me, can I delete stuff from this window?

 

[Christopher11]

On a related matter, when I connect to my MB Pro now to update music, it takes 40 minutes to back up the iPhone while syncing! Is there a way to tell it not to back up, but it still loads new music? I produce music and have several different mixes a day I need to load onto my iPhone.

 

[now i see it]

Yes!
In the iPhone finder window that you interact with to do backups & stuff, there’s options to not sync automatically.
Poke through the tabs to see what everything is doing. You can turn off auto backup and syncing if you want.

 

[Christopher11]

Yes!
In the iPhone finder window that you interact with to do backups & stuff, there’s options to not sync automatically.
Poke through the tabs to see what everything is doing. You can turn off auto backup and syncing if you want.

Thank you sincerely for responding. I've seen that, was at that window today, but is there a way to sync without auto backup? I can choose how to backup (local or cloud), but there doesn't seem to be an option not to backup, but only to sync. I need to sync in order to load new music.

 

[now i see it]

On the main iPhone Finder page, under Options, if you check “Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected” it will both sync AND backup.

If you don’t want it to backup, then uncheck this box - but then it won’t automatically sync either.

That’s the options Apple gives you.

 

[Christopher11]

On the main iPhone Finder page, under Options, if you check “Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected” it will both sync AND backup.

If you don’t want it to backup, then uncheck this box - but then it won’t automatically sync either.

That’s the options Apple gives you.

Yes, I noted this. Is there a way to sync manually then? I don't mind if I have to do it myself, just not sure to do it.

 

[now i see it]

Yes - explore the top tabs for different media types and syncing choices.

 

[Christopher11]

Okay, will do. Thanks so much.