don't mind the iOS devices, I'm more interested to free up space on Mac. particularly those System Data files...
I would like to know what to delete and what not.
I would like to know what to delete and what not.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
20+ Ways to Free Up iPhone Storage
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I don’t think you can. I’m pretty sure system data is the operating system and it’s read-only. You can’t even delete apps you don’t need like News
Is there an AI app that will scan all your photos for virtual duplicates (like 10 pictures taken at the same time), and recommend the sharpest/highest quality one and automatically delete the others? This sounds like a perfect use case for AI.
And while I’m magically requesting stuff, I’d like to backup the phone directly to an SSD without going through Mac OS. And restore a phone from it.
And while I’m magically requesting stuff, I’d like to backup the phone directly to an SSD without going through Mac OS. And restore a phone from it.
Very annoying…
True, for current models. But even 128 GB are on the lower end of the acceptable, nowadays. I regret so much having bought a 12.9” iPad Pro M1 three years ago with 128 GB of storage. I’m struggling to keep it under 100/110 GB of full storage (it is better not to fill it up entirely, for performance and storage health ).
To be honest you are doing a very “light” usage of your iPhone. It is subjective, but you hardly are a typical iPhone user considering the 64 GB used. I’m constantly managing my devices, trying to offload/optimize whatever is not really needed immediately (I still have a 1 TB OneDrive storage and a 2 TB AppleOne iCloud plan available), but I can hardly stay below 90 GB on my iPhone and 100/110 GB on my iPad.
It doesn’t constantly works. It starts offloading photos only when the storage is almost full (I don’t like that… I’d like to have the possibility to choose which photos to offload).
Deleting TikTok is a great idea, even if you don't need the storage.
I do, but search in ios/messages app is unusable piece of crap.. so it is pointless (to me) keep all messages as i rarely find what i need
There’s a lot of merit in curating your photos. There’s also a great deal of personal satisfaction to be gained, I’d recommend it to anyone."Think different."
How did we all manage all of our media BEFORE there was an iCloud? On our Macs. Mac can generally have upwards of endless storage, rent-free and fully within our control. Need even more space? Add another drive. New more space? Add another drive. Or a bigger drive. Etc. Use them ports and competitive third-party pricing for enormous storage for gigantic media libraries.
Then use the tools still there in that Mac to manage what lives on Mac vs. what lives on the mobile device. I strongly doubt just about anybody needs every single photo they've ever shot, every song they've accumulated, every video they own, etc. ALL with them at ALL times. I bet there is probably 80% of media on most people's devices that they've never viewed/played on that device... just hogging space.
Consider: what if you manage an extensive photo collection on your Mac in Photos but then make only select "best of" albums of photos you would really like to have with you at all times... then sync just those albums to your device? I do this in 2024. My iDevice has only 724 "best of" photos on it from a library of over 20K photos on Mac. Occasionally, another is worthy to join the "best of" album and that will become 725. And then maybe some other will make it 726. If I tried to give a solid 1-minute look at each of only 724 "best of" photos, that 724 minutes of time to see them all ONE time: 724/60 = 12 hours.
I also have a "smart album" that will include a fair number of most recently shot pics because those are the ones often shown right after traveling/vacations/etc... when we discuss what big adventure we most recently enjoyed. Then as that travel fades into the past, the next trip/vacation photos auto-sync to replace the oldest of those and the new adventure is what we talk about and may want to show a few pics as we tell the tales.
Net result: only a tiny percentage of 128GB is allocated to photos from a much larger library stored back at Mac.
Same with Music. I've accumulated a collection of about 16K songs that are basically my all-time favorites on Mac. I have more "playlists" of music than only the 2 or 3 photo "albums" to sync. But that amounts to about 4K total songs synched, again taking up relatively little space.
Same with videos. When I'm about the travel, I load up a Trip playlist in the TV app with about 10 videos I may want to watch on this trip, they sync and they take up a small amount of total space. Then on the next trip, watched ones fall out and I replace them with some other mix of about 10 for that trip.
Etc. All of this is basically how we did it before iCloud... and all of that still works and is about as easy as it was back then. I have about half of the storage of my iDevice "full" and half free and it has pretty much anything & everything I want to have with me... like our Fathers or Grandfathers putting about 6-12 favorite photo prints in their wallets (from maybe many books of printed photo albums back at home) and maybe a little box of cassette mix tapes under their car seats for their mobile media in their day. And that worked perfectly fine for them with their mobile photos being up to maybe a dozen and songs being up to maybe a few dozen.
And I use only the free iCloud space with only about 30% of that "full" at any given time... but never feeling like I'm missing out on something.
That shared though, if one feels the absolute need for access to everything at all times, another way to go vs. paying the ever-rising premium for Apple storage is buy a NAS like Synology, load it up and use their cloud storage on that NAS for access to everything in your own cloud. That's rent free and can be any size of cloud storage you want.
When I occasionally MAY need more than the usual pools of media on my iDevice, I put what I think I might need in my Synology NAS cloud space and can tap it if needed. I almost never need to do that but I can. Conceptually, I could load every photo/song/video into that space for on-the-go access to all of it but there is never enough time in any such time away from home where I can consumer all of it. So "best of" subsets tends to scratch all itches almost all of the time.
The way we used to do it might still be a good option for many of us. And owning ones own cloud can deliver the modern benefits of "everything being accessible" rent-free if we are among the presumably very rare person who must have everything available like that.
But there’s a cost, it’s called time! 20,000 photos at one second each????
If you pay yourself an hourly rate it doesn’t take too much maths to work out it’s far far cheaper to buy more storage for your iPhone, keep it all on board there.
The search capabilities of Photos these days means it’s really easy to find most pictures in your 20,000. Having them all in your pocket means you’re more likely to look at more that just your favourite 800.
HealthKit from a programming aspect also includes storing metrics from Apple Watch such as running, cycling.
Is that likely responsible for the data?
I believe this is a succinct method to get people paying for iCloud. It takes a hold on your iCloud storage and it seems little you can do exist to actually get it back and get it to stop. iCloud storage tiers are such terrible value too.
I've helped so many family members and friends with this over the years, the one that really gets me is how much storage Messages starts to use (and all the attachments). Not just locally, but even in iCloud. Seen some that have ballooned to well over 100GB.
Wish there was a simpler way to clear out old attachments rather than deleting one at a time manually.
Wish there was a simpler way to clear out old attachments rather than deleting one at a time manually.
I wish there was an option to back up messages history without photos/videos. My messages backup was nearly 30GB before I bit the bullet and ticked the “only keep 1 years worth” option.
Im guessing they refuse to do this purely because they know a lot of people will opt to buy more iCloud storage rather than delete messages.
Probably the biggest feature I miss from Android is being able to delete an apps cache files and restore it to its original downloaded size, having simple messaging apps ballooning up to 10GB is unacceptable to me, I know you can delete the app and redownload but it feels like such a stupid workaround. As did going into storage settings and having to manually selecting photos from messages to delete.
Im guessing they refuse to do this purely because they know a lot of people will opt to buy more iCloud storage rather than delete messages.
Probably the biggest feature I miss from Android is being able to delete an apps cache files and restore it to its original downloaded size, having simple messaging apps ballooning up to 10GB is unacceptable to me, I know you can delete the app and redownload but it feels like such a stupid workaround. As did going into storage settings and having to manually selecting photos from messages to delete.
Last edited:
Hello, if I use the Review large attachments function and delete attachments from Messages that comes from Photos or Files - do they still stay in Photos or Files or do they get deleted from there too?
Last edited:
Love the genius at Apple who decided we needed both “Sync Media” and Music in the report. Why does the OS need GBs for caches and logs?
It’s astonishing that Apple makes it such a pain in the butt. Perhaps we should submit a suggested change request?
I would like to see a how to remove iCloud storage. My iCloud has 300gbs of messages with seemingly no way to delete unless you download them all which is a clunky experience at best. The wife has the same issue but hers is more like 400gbs so in our 2tb plan iMessage it taking 700gbs bonkers.
I know I'm going to piss off some people, but I'm gonna rant about iOS for a second here.
Why oh why can't we simply just have a "delete cache" option that goes into every app, goes into System Data, and just removes every....single....piece of cached info from Documents & Data? The paucity of control that we have over iOS, when it comes to controlling the background bloat, frankly sucks, and is inexcusable, this far into an OS.
We also need a third "reset" option, rather than reset and restore from backup or reset and setup as new. We need a "reset and reload apps but do not load data" option. That way I don't have to take the nuclear option nor do I have to load old bloated iCloud backups.
Also, the music app, for the love of God, please let me purge Documents & Data from there. I have ZERO songs stored on my phone, but my D&D is 5GB.
Why oh why can't we simply just have a "delete cache" option that goes into every app, goes into System Data, and just removes every....single....piece of cached info from Documents & Data? The paucity of control that we have over iOS, when it comes to controlling the background bloat, frankly sucks, and is inexcusable, this far into an OS.
We also need a third "reset" option, rather than reset and restore from backup or reset and setup as new. We need a "reset and reload apps but do not load data" option. That way I don't have to take the nuclear option nor do I have to load old bloated iCloud backups.
Also, the music app, for the love of God, please let me purge Documents & Data from there. I have ZERO songs stored on my phone, but my D&D is 5GB.
In my case, it’s not records from a health provider.
479 megabytes of Health data is used by “active energy,” which is a list of daily calories burned. It’s a bug, unfortunately.
Last edited:
Turning off 'Sync Library' for Music, waiting a few minutes, and turning it back on seems to clear its data out as well.
How do I clear out my iphone instagram cache without deleting (or offloading) and reinstalling?
