iCloud iCloud Storage size not refreshing after deleting files!

[BigMcGuire]

Still not showing as used up.

Are you going to call Apple about it or just let it go? I'm debating if I really want to deal with it or not. In a sense, it is "free" storage, right?

 

[steve62388]

Are you going to call Apple about it or just let it go? I'm debating if I really want to deal with it or not. In a sense, it is "free" storage, right?

I’m just going to leave it. I’m presuming it’s a bug that will eventually get fixed. I don’t know if it’s free storage, when it’s full it might say as much without actually showing as full. I have dealt with Apple over weird iCloud service problems before and it’s rather laborious (initially cookie cutter replies and then admission the person you’re dealing with can’t solve the problem so they pass it up the chain and then you have to repeat the whole process over again).

 

[valpnow]

I had the same issue. Only apple support could help as there were some glitch on apple servers. So if you struggle, just make a call so they can fix it.

 

[BigMcGuire]

So I called up Apple. Yeah, the guy had no clue what I was talking about. I have 19.12GB in iCloud Drive. It is showing that I'm using 2.3 GB in iCloud Drive.

After 5 mins on the phone, figured my time was best spent doing something else. Still a little pissed that something I pay $9.99/mo for can't accurately tell me my usage. :/

I'm not the type to insist that they fix it either, I've got better things to do with my life (maybe).

It is definitely not counting accurately.


It says I'm using 110.5 GB.

Other Documents is iCloud Storage (2.3GB) --- Scanner Mini is 200MB and everything else below is pretty tiny.

I just added 3GB of storage to my iCloud Drive yesterday and my 110.5 GB of usage didn't budge.

Annoyed, but not enough to do anything more than complain about it here. :/

 

[BigMcGuire]

WOW... it finally fixed itself!

Haha! It finally fixed itself! For the longest time Other Documents was 2.2-2.3GB. It reflects correctly now on all my devices. I did nothing to fix it.

 

[Apple?really?]

See my post No 15 above.
I waited 5 months until Apple gave me back my 3.1GB. That meant for 5 months I had to pay the price increase from 50GB to 200GB. Not a huge sum I admit but when you add up all the other account holders in a similar position that’ll be a large slice Apple will have made.

I applied my stop touching my nerves solution: direct downgrade from 50GB to 5GB. Then you will see how it takes less than 5 months. Theese guys are naive. They really thought I was going to increse my storage space for the face? Bye bye my loves, no more apples, I take watermelons better.

 

[vintonole]

Ugh. It seems that just downgrading to the free account is my only option. I've called support multiple times and can't take the frustration anymore. Whenever I mention a device they immediately want to shuffle me off to support for that device. What you deleted a file from the iMac... I can't help you here. Sigh. Guess I'll go back to using gmail and dropbox... icloud isn't worth this headache.

 

[pretom]

This might help,
> Go to www.icloud.com
> Log in to your account
> Open iCloud Drive
> You will see "Recently Deleted" on the right corner, click that
> Delete the files that you want to delete

 

[Richard Price]

I see this thread is going round in circles. I am in same position except have 90GB of space on my wife's account in Family Sharing which has not been released by Apple. One of the reasons for taking the Apple route rather than Google or others is I don't have to worry about this sort of thing. Will leave it a few more days, if the space is not cleared (after falling all the recommendations above. I will switch off iCloud and go the Google route for my Cloud Solutions...

 

[BigMcGuire]

It’s my experience that even though it says the space is used it isn’t and it’ll let you save items. About once a month it recalculates - though not always. But in reality the space is free so if you try to save something it will let you.

Unacceptable in my opinion. I use OneDrive with a $99 family subscription for my wife and I.

 

[denbee27]

It is now a year and a half since the first post on the issue of the iCloud drive not refreshing space when deleting files. My 200 gig iCloud is full yet I've deleted 100 gigs of files and my recently deleted files page is empty.

So.... Apple has not fixed a problem they have known about for several years. As a result, instead of upgrading from 200 gigs to 2T and fighting the faulty Apple iCloud system, I purchased space on a much more cost-effective 2T cloud. I will only use iCloud for small files such as spreadsheets, word documents and for my photos. (It is nice to sync photos, mail and so forth across all my apple devices). Now for the heavy lifting, adios iClould. No way I'm going to upgrade to 2T of your space when your space management system is broken and you refuse fix it.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I've done more experimenting with this since my post in January.

My conclusion: It takes 90 days for space to be refunded when I delete data on iCloud. It takes 30 days to show space used when I load data onto iCloud.

Sometimes though, the process can .... "glitch" and not report the right space and then, the only way to fix it is to delete everything and re-upload everything and wait 30 - 90 days.

I still have some apps that I know take 2-3GB of space on iCloud showing 200kb in iCloud Storage Usage. So denbee27 is right, it is broken and I don't think they'll fix it anytime soon.

I use OneDrive as my primary cloud storage because I work with Windows so... :/.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Well, I have to eat my own words here.

It has been over a month and iCloud Storage has not updated.

On the 25th of June I put 44GB of data into my iCloud Drive. Since June 25 the Other Documents has been counting downward a few MB a day from 1GB. To this day, (way over a month later), it still shows 882MB used when I clearly have 44.74+ GB of data in iCloud.

We'll count out to 90 days I guess?

 

[BigMcGuire]

Funny, after I complain about this, since June 25.... -- this morning:

It isn't totaling them up right, but at least it shows 42GB in iCloud ! LOL.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Yesterday, August 19 2020 it finally updated:

June 25 2020 I uploaded 44GB of data to iCloud and it took until August 19 2020 to correctly show up in the iCloud Storage totals (same on iPhone/iPad). That's 55 days. Wow!

 

[Beards]

Yesterday, August 19 2020 it finally updated:

June 25 2020 I uploaded 44GB of data to iCloud and it took until August 19 2020 to correctly show up in the iCloud Storage totals (same on iPhone/iPad). That's 55 days. Wow!

View attachment 946114

I know how you feel.... I started this topic over 2 years back and my iCloud has been sorted then went wrong then sorted etc etc.
In other words the iCloud storage is a continuous problem and no matter how hard we complain we are always left with frustration...... Thank You NOT Apple.

 

[sasj15]

Yep. I can't backup my phones now since I have no space enough out of the 2TB storage.

Deleted well over 200 GB and Apple claimed it is some sort of bugs the storage encountered.

I guess I will call again and ask for someone to reclaim the storage back again.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Yeah this is frustrating to me ... it can take 3-5+ months for iCloud to reflect deleted iCloud Drive files being removed.

Yet, it continues to count up as I add files. lol. I mean, I'm only dealing with about 15GB here, so it's not hurting me but... for something I pay $9.99/mo for ... it's more than just a little annoying.

I've tried to contact Apple Support to reset my storage but ... several reps I talked to had no clue what I was saying and refused to take it further - and I really didn't want to waste my time.

What's interesting is that if I delete my iPhone backups - the reflection is instant. But iCloud Drive? Nope.

 

[simon says]

Same happening here, deleting files doesn't correct available disk space. PLUS: I get different readings from my desktop Sys Prefs, compared to when I check my iPhone or log into icloud.com in a browser:

 

[sasj15]

So I just finished talking to a senior advisor (4th person I dealt with since I opened the case), and he was able to fix the issue!

Basically what he did was performed iCloud drive storage recalculation process to reindex the files and folders in iCloud drive. It took sometime to complete. After about half an hour, the storage was reclaimed and it immediately starting showing on all my devices.

 

[BigMcGuire]

So I just finished talking to a senior advisor (4th person I dealt with since I opened the case), and he was able to fix the issue!

Basically what he did was performed iCloud drive storage recalculation process to reindex the files and folders in iCloud drive. It took sometime to complete. After about half an hour, the storage was reclaimed and it immediately starting showing on all my devices.

I'd reclaim an estimated 20+GB if I did this. The only thing preventing me from attempting this is the hours I'd spend trying to convince techs to do it. lol. (and I'm only using 362GB of my 2TB).

Interesting this even exists and is necessary. --- Thanks for letting us know.

 

[sasj15]

I'd reclaim an estimated 20+GB if I did this. The only thing preventing me from attempting this is the hours I'd spend trying to convince techs to do it. lol. (and I'm only using 362GB of my 2TB).

Interesting this even exists and is necessary. --- Thanks for letting us know.

iCloud consists of 7 containers according to the advisor I talked to. Each one apparently are independent when it comes to storage management hence why when you remove backups, it is instantly effective.

iCloud drive however is different. Which is how the advisor suggests that it is handled differently when it comes to storage management. So it is the process of reindexing files and folder which then performs the recalculation procedure to reflect the actual available size.

I believe iCloud drive is not meant for cloud storage access per se and I think it is going to continue that way. They made available aside the other containers so that it may serve a purpose if needed.

 

[BenjaminNYC]

Hello, I joined up to comments on this issue. I was using 300GB of the 2TB plan. I removed 200GB of raw media to an external drive in order to get under the 200GB plan. Same thing happened. Storage would not update. A tier 1 support agent just said I had to wait but offered to transfer me to tier 2 as well. Tier 2 agent resolved it in 15 mins with a "recalculation of iCloud storage."

She did not seem familiar with the issue at first, but she did her research and resolved it.

 

[ksalomon83]

My iCloud was showing as full, mainly because of messages. So about week ago, I did a big clean up in my messages. The days passed and my iCloud space was never going back down. I called Apple yesterday (horrible experience) and there was nothing they could do and encouraged me to upgrade my storage size. This morning, my storage is back down. I find this very weird, why would the iCloud storage not reflect the accurate messages size? Please see screenshots.

 

[Lizzard899]

So Ive read this whole thread. I just got the se 2022. I had the iphone 8. When I backed up from my icloud on my se my icloud storage was HUGE. It went from 53.3MB-58.1 I just got done talking to apple and they told me to go icloud.com/find and omg you will not believe it. SO I saw ALL my old phones on there that Ive never used in years. They all said offline obviously. SO I manually clicked on each of them. AND CLICKED REMOVE and then it left me with just showing my current device the se i bought Tuesday as the only one on there. SO WHAT I DID was after i removed the old devices on icloud.com/find I went back to my se phone backed it up again and my storage went down a lot. Its not back to where it should be but from what Ive read in this thread it might take up to 180 days for that to happen. SO yea inside trick is to go to icloud.com/find and youll see all your old devices you dont use anymore. If you delete (click remove) and back up your current phone itll give you back your storage. Funny thing is everytime I get a new phone I do go to my icloud on my phone and remove the old phones right away. BUT like I said just like everyones stated in this thread, it might take 180 days for iclouds system to recognize it or refresh. SO you never know maybe my icloud will go down again after 180 days I dont know. Just wanted to let you guys know that little hidden trick. Ive never heard of icloud.com/find I only know of icloud.com so that was neat.