I have a 256gb iPhone 13 Pro Max and couldn't even download a new app today because I was out of storage. After offloading apps, deleting some videos/photos/etc, I was able to free up around 6gb of space. Still after all of that, plus rebooting, updating, syncing to my MacBook Pro, etc, I'm still at 89gb of "other system data." When I first got this phone and transferred everything from my previous iPhone 12 Pro Max, I was almost out of storage due to something weird happening when transferring data, but it was never this bad. What do I do? You can see that I don't have a bunch of crap taking up all my jiggabytes. I'm starting to think this is a Storagegate problem created by Apple in order to force everyone into paying for more and more iCloud storage.
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iPhone 13 Pro Max iPhone Storage Full thanks to "System Data" Storagegate?
- Thread starter treimche
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This part of iOS has been buggy for a while now. Updating to 15.1 fixed the problem for lots of people (myself included), but not others. There are various threads describing the issue.
The obvious thing would be to back up your data, and try a reset and restore. It’s a generic solution - the ‘turn it off and back on again‘ of the iOS world - but it does solve a lot of these sorts of problems.
I don’t have this behaviour on my phone but I would also then tend to erase and set it up fresh to see what happens.
Yup, indeed - as I say, it's a known issue that lots of people have had. It's a very irritating problem.
Solution remains the same though - reset and reinstall. Time consuming but straightforward enough.
I can see the case for going straight to that, but personally I would try restoring a backup first, especially if the phone has a fairly elaborate set-up that would be time-consuming to recreate. You can always escalate to doing a fresh install next if need be.
That's what backups are for. Having everything backed up in two different places (i.e. iCloud plus something else) means you can do this kind of monkeying around with the confidence that the only thing you'll lose is your time!
Google, OneDrive and of course iCloud are frequently used for photos. Also, export your photo library to local storage which is best done on a Mac, not iOS. I can’t speak highly enough though of Adobe Lightroom. It will auto sync from your camera roll, also easy to upload your albums into Lightroom albums, so it’s great for organizing and photo library management.
For other items, iCloud or a Mac to have backup. Is that still done in iTunes or something newer now.
Apple makes doing a clean install easier than Android would be.
Reinstalling apps fresh is even preferable. Erasing insures hopefully anyway that the pages on storage are no longer defective. There’s no Disk Warrior for iOS to deal with files and directories.
For other items, iCloud or a Mac to have backup. Is that still done in iTunes or something newer now.
Apple makes doing a clean install easier than Android would be.
Reinstalling apps fresh is even preferable. Erasing insures hopefully anyway that the pages on storage are no longer defective. There’s no Disk Warrior for iOS to deal with files and directories.
I have a support case with Apple because of this problem, and after doing a bunch of diagnosis and looking at data logs from my iPhone 13 Pro Max, this is what they said:
"Thanks for you patience. I have received an update about your case.
The Apple engineering team has confirmed the retrieval of the log files to further investigate your issue, and at this time we do not have any further steps to take to attempt to resolve the storage issue.
The results of the investigation may come in the form of an update, new product documentation provided by Apple, or a combination of the two. Please keep me up to date if symptoms change, or if you discover a workaround.
I will also be in contact with you as necessary for this issue as I receive updates on my end."
So basically they're admitting there is something wrong with iOS 15 and they need to fix it.
Also, my storage is back up to 253.8GB of 256. 92.34GB of that is "System Data." Great.
"Thanks for you patience. I have received an update about your case.
The Apple engineering team has confirmed the retrieval of the log files to further investigate your issue, and at this time we do not have any further steps to take to attempt to resolve the storage issue.
The results of the investigation may come in the form of an update, new product documentation provided by Apple, or a combination of the two. Please keep me up to date if symptoms change, or if you discover a workaround.
I will also be in contact with you as necessary for this issue as I receive updates on my end."
So basically they're admitting there is something wrong with iOS 15 and they need to fix it.
Also, my storage is back up to 253.8GB of 256. 92.34GB of that is "System Data." Great.
Apple is still not helping out at all with this situation. Their current solution is for me to back the iPhone up to my MacBook Pro, erase all content and settings, then when setting up the iPhone again, don't restore from the backup, but sign into iCloud to restore the data that automatically syncs with iCloud. I don't have enough iCloud storage to do this and they refuse to give me enough to do this (even though they are damn near a $3T company now ?♂️).
Apps on my phone keep crashing multiple times per day because the storage is full. I'm tempted to stop paying for the damn thing until they fix it.
Apps on my phone keep crashing multiple times per day because the storage is full. I'm tempted to stop paying for the damn thing until they fix it.
That's how I performed the backup for switching from iPhone 12 Pro Max to the 13.
Then do a backup, do a DFU and setup the phone as a new device initially to see if the storage issue reoccurs. Then Erase All Contents and restore from backup.
Taz, I'm going to have to try it and see what happens. This iPhone is borderline unusable at times.
upandown, from researching this forum and online in general, this is definitely still an active bug that Apple has NO fix for.
upandown, from researching this forum and online in general, this is definitely still an active bug that Apple has NO fix for.
What is the trigger for the storage bug? Some have it where it over reports the actual storage and others have it show up as having zero actual storage. I have not experienced the bug. Why does it show up for some and not others. I have seen so many instances where issues not affect others.
If you or someone you know can figure that out, PLEASE inform Apple so they can fix all these messed up iPhones.
Look at my images in the first post. Right now I'm at 252.8 of 256GB used, and 92.05GB of that is "System Data." I need to offload a bunch of pics and videos, but thanks to Apple, almost half of my iPhone's storage is something they can't figure out.
Well I went through the process of backing up the iPhone to my MacBook and then wiping the phone clean. Upon setting it up from scratch, there was no excessive System Data, it was at 2.44GB, with some small fluctuations as the phone was presumably figuring things out.
After verifying that, I restored from backup and it was right back to the same clogged up StorageGate situation. I will say that after wiping and restoring, my iPhone is (or at least was) noticeably faster, and apps stopped crashing. It has been 8 days now since doing al of this and apps are crashing again, and currently 94GB of "System Data" is taking up space on my iPhone.
Apple is no help here at all. This is totally ridiculous, and I want to stop paying them for this phone since it doesn't work properly. Hell, I even asked if they would give me enough iCloud storage to offload other items that are taking up storage but they said they can't do that (even though they're worth close to $3 trillion).
It is up to you but if it were me I would not just do a full restore from backup but setup as new device and manually install each app from scratch, if possible.