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iPad Twitter taking up 888mb of storage

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dodder92

macrumors member
Original poster
So I was just checking how much storage my apps were taking up and saw Twitter was taking up 888mb! I can't really believe it considering the app itself is only 37mb in size.

Does anyone know why it's taken up so much of my iPad Air's storage?
 
My guess is that cached images are only released when storage gets low.
iOS itself manages cache directories within App containers.
Of course any App might implement cleaning its cache by itself.
 
Twitter taking up 888mb of storage

Delete and reinstall twitter. That is ridiculous.

Many apps have poor cache management.
 
dodder92 said:
So I was just checking how much storage my apps were taking up and saw Twitter was taking up 888mb! I can't really believe it considering the app itself is only 37mb in size.

Does anyone know why it's taken up so much of my iPad Air's storage?
Click to expand...

Is your iPad low on storage?
 
Thanks for all your replies. Deleting the app and reinstalling appears to have solved the storage issue. It's a 16gb iPad that I have so I'm always a bit conscious about how much memory I have free.
 
I've always felt that ios had terrible cache management, I've had apps that where originally 20MB's bloat up to nearly 2GB's !! I know that it's up to individual Devs to implement cache cleaning systems, but it would be great if there was a system wide way to manually (or automatically) clear caches
 
Yakibomb said:
I've always felt that ios had terrible cache management, I've had apps that where originally 20MB's bloat up to nearly 2GB's !! I know that it's up to individual Devs to implement cache cleaning systems, but it would be great if there was a system wide way to manually (or automatically) clear caches
Click to expand...

It's not that so much as Apple locks down iOS and doesn't allow you to manually purge or delete unwanted cache like Android does. Hopefully one day Apple will get with the program.
 
I recently reinstalled Vine after noticing it was almost 1.5GB. Insane. I have had to do this several times, too. Instagram has reached 300MB a few times as well. Messages reached 1.2GB on my iPod Touch, even though I had no messages, I deleted them all. Luckily, my main device (retina mini) hasn't had this issue yet, right around 20MB.

I really hope that Apple will implement a way to strip apps of all this junk within Usage settings or something. Like, there could be maybe a few buttons, "Clear all cache" which would delete everything but the app. Then another button that would delete all the.. Extra, more unnecessary stuff, but would preserve your saves in a game, for example.

I have sent feedback to Apple as an "Enhancement Request", even though I'm not exactly sure of how possible implementations of a feature like this would be. I'm assuming it can be done still.
 
It should be closer to 300MB.

That seems ridiculous.
Back up your iPad, restore it and then restore from back up. Get rid of all the cache.
 
What does the size of an app have to do with the data it caches? If the app misbehaves I'd just delete it and use the web site instead.
 
Mr. Buzzcut said:
What does the size of an app have to do with the data it caches? If the app misbehaves I'd just delete it and use the web site instead.
Click to expand...

Total usage. If Twitter was using 888mb of storage but it was a 850mb app this wouldn't have been a big deal.
 
cynics said:
Total usage. If Twitter was using 888mb of storage but it was a 850mb app this wouldn't have been a big deal.
Click to expand...

That doesn't make much sense. You'd prefer the app be bloated? The whole point is the content. Many iphone apps like this are simple front ends to the web site content. The app should be relatively small. If it isn't they are doing something wrong.

It would be nice to choose how much content is cached but we are talking iphone here. Users don't get to think much for themselves. 🙂
 
Mr. Buzzcut said:
That doesn't make much sense. You'd prefer the app be bloated? The whole point is the content. Many iphone apps like this are simple front ends to the web site content. The app should be relatively small. If it isn't they are doing something wrong.

It would be nice to choose how much content is cached but we are talking iphone here. Users don't get to think much for themselves. 🙂
Click to expand...

Hmm? I didn't say that.

You asked what does the size of the app have to do with the data in cache. Nothing obviously.

However it was mentioned originally as a point of contrast. Thats why I said, total usage.

If the app (lets say a game this time) was 850 mb but using a total of 888mb there isn't a problem or at least wouldn't appear to be. However if that game was 50 mb using 888 mb total then there is something wrong going on more then likely. Or the opposite with some other app/game that is 3gb and using 800mb of cache, may not be a problem.

The contrast between app and total usage is what makes the difference there. Without the app size everything could be fine.
 
When I was jailbroken, the most useful tweak was icleaner just for clearing cashe. So yeah, this is a problem.
 
Rodster said:
It's not that so much as Apple locks down iOS and doesn't allow you to manually purge or delete unwanted cache like Android does. Hopefully one day Apple will get with the program.
Click to expand...

You mean you can't do this?



Wow.

----------
Mechayoshi said:
When I was jailbroken, the most useful tweak was icleaner just for clearing cashe. So yeah, this is a problem.
Click to expand...

You have to jailbreak to clear cache? You're joking.
 
Hmm....have had my iPhone 5S since launch day and ALWAYS restore from a backup.

Have NEVER had to delete any app just to clear cache....have never had any app take up all that space.

Twitter is at 139 mb right now. Which I guess means there's 100 mb of cache, but as I'm not strapped for memory, it's really not a big deal.

Messages also never gets that big for me either - though I AirDrop and PhotoStream as much as possible rather than sending pictures and videos via iMessage....THAT will kill your storage.

I'll have to look into my iPad to see if I'm having any issues there. My iPad is always full, but that's what I get for buying a 32GB iPad and wanting to throw on a bunch of 2 GB games and movies....

EDIT: FYI https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1609602/
 
Last edited:
Rodster said:
No app I have ever installed on any of my iPad's gives me that choice. I'm anti facebook and twitter. On Android every app installed gives you that option. No such luck with Apple.
Click to expand...

But there are apps that have the option, so it's not like Apple is stopping devs from adding it.

Simply iOS manages cache for the user (when apps get too large, iOS will clean them out - if you catch this happening you'll see the app go dark with the word "Cleaning..." under it) whereas Android offers an OS wide cache cleaning override as it were for each app.

If you don't like one, get the other. I personally have no desire to micro manage my apps or cache or storage. I buy the device that suits my needs (a 32GB iPhone) and let the OS take it from there. To this point, after 5 years with an iPhone/iPad I have not once needed to delete an app to clear cache.

But as I said earlier (or maybe in another thread on this topic), I make my family and friends share photos and videos with me via AirDrop and PhotoStream as these methods put the media directly in my camera roll versus having a copy in my iMessage and having to COPY it to the CR (which creates a duplicate) - which I think is a big culprit for all the "iMessage taking up 4 GB!!!" threads.
 
Yeah, I noticed the OP's issue as well. Being jailbroken, I went ahead and downloaded the iCleaner app from Cydia that helps to purge apps of their caches. If anyone is jailbroken, check it out.
 
Facebook is a pain for doing this as well to the point i often delete and reinstall it to get some space back. In fact Facebook i think have realised this and recently they started doing an app update every few weeks and almost say as much on the update reason list against it when it shows as an update in the app store.
 
bransoj said:
Facebook is a pain for doing this as well to the point i often delete and reinstall it to get some space back. In fact Facebook i think have realised this and recently they started doing an app update every few weeks and almost say as much on the update reason list against it when it shows as an update in the app store.
Click to expand...

I found myself doing this a few times a week with the Facebook app. The Spotify app is notorious for doing it as well since I'm constantly deleting and reinstalling both apps numerous times a week.
 
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