What's Using The Storage On My Apple Watch?

[Buadhai]

Apple Watch 2 (Model NP062LL/A)

On my Apple Watch I have zero songs, 16 photos and 4 apps installed. I have no Podcasts or Audio Books.

Somehow I have only 417 MB of storage available. How do I find out what's using over 4GB of storage and how do I get rid of it?

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Another troubling thing is that it seems my watch is not getting backed up to my iPhone.

 

[Buadhai]

Usage as shown on watch.

 

[akash.nu]

On the iPhone app, Under General > Usage you can see which app is taking how much of space and what you can remove to gain storage.

 

[Buadhai]

On the iPhone app, Under General > Usage you can see which app is taking how much of space and what you can remove to gain storage.

As you can see from the watch screen captures, the app using the most storage is the Activity app at less than 300MB and the next is the Photos & Camera app at only 20MB. The rest of the apps on the watch use tiny amounts of storage. It's something other than an app that's taking up all the storage space.

 

[akash.nu]

As you can see from the watch screen captures, the app using the most storage is the Activity app at less than 300MB and the next is the Photos & Camera app at only 20MB. The rest of the apps on the watch use tiny amounts of storage. It's something other than an app that's taking up all the storage space.

You’re not in the same screen as me though. The watch doesn’t show all the details.

I’m seeing similar usage on my watch.

So it’s the OS plus your apps data. Looks fine to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Buadhai]

T

These are the only Watch apps that have any storage usage. Tell me what to delete so I can install the latest WatchOS update. I need to get to 800MB available.

If you add up all the storage used by those apps (the only ones shown using storage) it comes to much less than 4GB. Where did all that other storage go?

 

[rojocrandall]

Have you tried about unpairing and re-pairing your watch?

 

[akash.nu]

View attachment 917314T

These are the only Watch apps that have any storage usage. Tell me what to delete so I can install the latest WatchOS update. I need to get to 800MB available.

If you add up all the storage used by those apps (the only ones shown using storage) it comes to much less than 4GB. Where did all that other storage go?

watchOS.

 

[Buadhai]

Have you tried about unpairing and re-pairing your watch?

No. I'm afraid to do that since there has been no backup of my watch to my iPhone. I'm not confident that unpairing will trigger a backup.

watchOS.

So, you're telling me that I'll never be able to update the WatchOS because the current WatchOS is using nearly 4GB of storage?

 

[akash.nu]

So, you're telling me that I'll never be able to update the WatchOS because the current WatchOS is using nearly 4GB of storage?

If you look at my usage as well, watchOS is pretty close to 2.8GB altogether. So I don’t see you’ve got a lot of wiggle room there. Just to be on the safe side though, you could potentially take a backup and restore the watch.

 

[Buadhai]

My wife has a series 3 watch which has the same storage as my series 2 which is 8GB. Even though she has 29 songs, 22 photos and 8 apps installed, her usage is only 2.8GB, which includes the software update of 357MB. I have 0 songs, 16 photos and only 4 apps yet my usage is 4.3GB even though the software update has not been downloaded. How is my usage 50% higher than hers?

Just to be on the safe side though, you could potentially take a backup and restore the watch.

How do I "take a backup"?

 

[jzuena]

I have a Series 3 and it seems like watchOS takes up less than 2GB for me. Unpairing/repairing will probably clean out the memory, but you will probably lose a bunch of data. My Activity usage is much smaller, probably because once data is sync'd to the phone, it doesn't need to be on the watch any more.

 

[Buadhai]

Interesting. My watch syncs the activity data with the phone seemingly in real time. I wonder why it leaves so much on my watch?

Anyway, based on your experience and that of my wife I definitely think something is amiss with my watch. It’s not backing up to the phone and it uses way too much storage for what I have on it.

I will unpair and repair and hope for the best.

 

[akash.nu]

Interesting. My watch syncs the activity data with the phone seemingly in real time. I wonder why it leaves so much on my watch?

Anyway, based on your experience and that of my wife I definitely think something is amiss with my watch. It’s not backing up to the phone and it uses way too much storage for what I have on it.

I will unpair and repair and hope for the best.

View attachment 917497

Yeah that’s probably your best bet seeing syncing is not working either.

 

[Buadhai]

Yeah that’s probably your best bet seeing syncing is not working either.

It does sync data, such as workout data. But, it doesn't create backups. You earlier suggested that I "take a backup and restore the watch".

Exactly how do I "take a backup"?

 

[akash.nu]

It does sync data, such as workout data. But, it doesn't create backups. You earlier suggested that I "take a backup and restore the watch".

Exactly how do I "take a backup"?

When you try to unpair it gives you an option if I remember correctly.

 

[rojocrandall]

It does sync data, such as workout data. But, it doesn't create backups. You earlier suggested that I "take a backup and restore the watch".

Exactly how do I "take a backup"?

Googled it, found these:
Back up your Apple Watch
How to back up Apple Watch settings & data

"When you unpair your Apple Watch from your iPhone, your iPhone automatically creates a backup of your Apple Watch"

 

[oeagleo]

Googled it, found these:
Back up your Apple Watch
How to back up Apple Watch settings & data

"When you unpair your Apple Watch from your iPhone, your iPhone automatically creates a backup of your Apple Watch"

But, in iTunes, you need to make sure that your backup is encrypted, otherwise, you'll lose your activity history, badges, etc. When you connect your phone to Itunes, there's an option. I know this is for the phone, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

 

[iamasmith]

But, in iTunes, you need to make sure that your backup is encrypted, otherwise, you'll lose your activity history, badges, etc.

It's not quite the case.

The data will return eventually but from my experience and others it seems to come back very slowly and possibly only when on Wifi and on charge. Every time I have restored a watch or changed to a new watch it's taken a while and some folks have reported weeks until all their workout history was finally back.

 

[jzuena]

I had to unpair/pair my watch for some reason a while back and it did eventually get back in sync with my iPhone and what was on iCloud. I think backups were working, though. I then had to do it again when I replaced my iPhone 6 with an 11, but everything was working smoothly that time.

 

[Buadhai]

I'm not really concerned about the workout history being synced back to my watch. I generally just review that sort of thing on my phone. What I'm mostly concerned about is not having to set the watch up again in terms of watch faces, installed apps, workout preferences, etc.

And, since my watch has not been backing up I'm concerned that when I unpair and am asked if I want to backup the watch, the backup might not actually happen.

 

[Buadhai]

Checking my phone today I see that usage has gone from 4.3GB to 3.5GB with 1.2GB avaialbe. The amount used includes the Software Update software of 356.mb. So, that means that nearly 1GB of stuff simply went away. Where did it go and what was it?

 

[Buadhai]

And, after finishing the software update:



But, still no Watch backups on my iPhone. Not a one.