Here’s something odd. My iPhone is running somewhat low on space. It showed about 55 GB free with 24.7 GB of that being “System Data”. I decided to enable “Offload Unused Apps” which said would save me 26.21 GB of space.
After I rebooted my iPhone I checked my space and it said I had 81 GB free and no System Data. I found that very odd so I turned off “Offload Unused Apps” and checked how much free space I had and it still said 81 GB. I killed the Preferences app and checked again and the free space dropped to 55 GB and the System Data was back to 24.7 GB. I reproduced this on my iPad too.
It looks like iOS adds the space “gained” by enabling “Offload Unused app” to the free space which messes up calculating the System Data storage since that adding up all the used storage no longer matches reported used storage. That’s very odd and could explain the “storage bug” people see.
After I rebooted my iPhone I checked my space and it said I had 81 GB free and no System Data. I found that very odd so I turned off “Offload Unused Apps” and checked how much free space I had and it still said 81 GB. I killed the Preferences app and checked again and the free space dropped to 55 GB and the System Data was back to 24.7 GB. I reproduced this on my iPad too.
It looks like iOS adds the space “gained” by enabling “Offload Unused app” to the free space which messes up calculating the System Data storage since that adding up all the used storage no longer matches reported used storage. That’s very odd and could explain the “storage bug” people see.