"Cleaning" apps on iOS 10.

[Joe Siegler]

I've owned an iPhone since the 3GS was the then current iPhone. Saw something I never saw today, one of my apps (The Wikipedia app) was greyed, and saw "cleaning" underneath it. A google search about that tells me it was cleaning cache files.

Every thing I read (including a thread here in the iOS 7 area) says that if this is happening, you're very low on space.

That is obviously not the case with me, as I have 33.6Gb available on my 128Gb iPhone. So it can't be that.

Anyone have any other ideas why this is happening? Perhaps more recent iOS versions will clean app caches on their own periodically vs the "low on space" reason from before?

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Yes I observed that too for the Facebook app! Having only 0~250MB free on iPhone 6 Plus (16GB) obvious a very wrong choice! So cleaning is welcome here.

 

[KALLT]

It is not necessarily cleaning a cache. Apps can also create temporary files which the system may clear from time to time regardless of space considerations. You cannot distinguish this in the UI.

 

[mjschabow]

Did you happen to rent a movie in iTunes right before it happened?

 

[m4v3r1ck]

It is not necessarily cleaning a cache. Apps can also create temporary files which the system may clear from time to time regardless of space considerations. You cannot distinguish this in the UI.

Thanks! What's exactly your view on what cleaning does precisely? Is there a KB for it?

Cheers

 

[pacorob]

So cleaning is welcome here.

There are ways to do that like with these third party apps: iOverwrite, Power Clean. It would ofcourse be better if Apple made this mandatory in iOS. Some app do have a feature already though to clean cache especially third party video apps.

 

[Jordan246]

I've owned an iPhone since the 3GS was the then current iPhone. Saw something I never saw today, one of my apps (The Wikipedia app) was greyed, and saw "cleaning" underneath it. A google search about that tells me it was cleaning cache files.

Every thing I read (including a thread here in the iOS 7 area) says that if this is happening, you're very low on space.

That is obviously not the case with me, as I have 33.6Gb available on my 128Gb iPhone. So it can't be that.

Anyone have any other ideas why this is happening? Perhaps more recent iOS versions will clean app caches on their own periodically vs the "low on space" reason from before?

i would try Smart memory pro it has always worked for me.

 

[KALLT]

Thanks! What's exactly your view on what cleaning does precisely? Is there a KB for it?

Just documentation for the file system, written for developers. Apps have access to three top-level folders within their sandbox, one of them being tmp/. The system simply deletes the contents of that folder, though Apple does not say when and how much they delete. Developers simply have to assume that any file within that folder may be deleted at any time, so they should only use it as scratch space.

On macOS, Apple says that files which have not been touched in 30 days are removed.