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Chilternburt

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 7, 2003
39
49
Durban, South Africa
Hi, has anyone else noticed massive data usage on their phone / iPad on iOS 12.
Currently my phone has used 1.0GB for this calendar month for DNS Services alone. I reset my mobile Data stats monthly to track my usage. I've tried Resetting Network settings, but no joy.

Im on an iPhone 8 Plus running 12.4, no betas or anything like that.
 

Helmsley

macrumors 6502a
Sep 4, 2017
691
335
Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Hi, has anyone else noticed massive data usage on their phone / iPad on iOS 12.
Currently my phone has used 1.0GB for this calendar month for DNS Services alone. I reset my mobile Data stats monthly to track my usage. I've tried Resetting Network settings, but no joy.

Im on an iPhone 8 Plus running 12.4, no betas or anything like that.

Also an 8 Plus here on iOS 12.4.

DNS Services is 94.1 MB for me. Overall data usage 1.4 TB on cellular. And that was since usage was last reset in December 2017.
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
5,797
4,396
Awfully high number.

I'm about two weeks into current plan month, iPhone 8, 12.4: 5.4MB on almost 1GB of data.

Wild guess: the DNS servers you are using are wonky, so, lots of retries? My home wifi points to IBM's servers for primary, Cloudflare next, then Google (9.9.9.9, 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4). Any public wifi I use on a regular basis, I go through the steps of overriding their DNS with the above.

Some app that's really hammering data usage?

But even then, cannot really see how that much data is being used for DNS even with wonkiness.

Might want to try the nuclear option of setting up as new and see if things calm down, then reintroduce apps and services.
 

Airforcekid

macrumors 68000
Sep 29, 2008
1,707
680
United States of America
I had this issue too. I fixed it by installing the 1.1.1.1 Cloudflare app and using the DNS vpn the data use dropped to zero and all my DNS requests are encrypted now. It may seem crazy but my load times seem faster too.
 
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