Please Help! iPhone Storage full and will NOT go down no matter what!

[Sam99999]

hello, I am having an incredibly frustrating issue with my iPhone (Xs Max, 256, iOS 16.6). Last night, I tried to backup to my Mac, but the process reached 80% then failed. as it was late night, I figured I would back it up today. I had 7GB free storage out of 256gb last night. today I wake up to check my Phone and it says storage full, I try to open Whatsapp and it won't allow me telling me I need to free up some space.

The issue is, I deleted up to 10gb of data from my iPhone immediately yet the storage still says 255.8/256 used. My iPhone is also starting to enter into a Respring Loop whenever I use it and I Have no idea what is causing the storage to keep expanding even after all my deletions. I am still able to connect it to my computer, but I am worried imitating the back up process is what's causing the storage expansion bug so I'm scared to back it up, yet I Have no other way to salvage my data.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update: I tried backing it up with Finder, it gives me an error "cannot backup because an error occurred". Im about to lose all my data and I have no means of backing please help me solve this issue!

 

[kitKAC]

You don't have any iCloud backups at all?

 

[turbochgd]

Do you have a recent backup on your computer you could restore? As stated in the above post an iCloud backup which would be automatic in most cases? Hopefully you’ve been backing up your phone in case of something like this.

 

[Christopher Kim]

Also, when you say you immediately deleted 10gb of data, what was it? Was it data within an app (eg. Downloaded movies from Netflix)? It's possible it was something that doesn't truly delete...

+1 to suggestion of maybe subscribing to iCloud for a month (200gb is $2.99), and see if it'll backup via WiFi to iCloud? Not ideal, but worth the cost to see if it'll work. I've had the 2TB iCloud plan for years now (helps that I share it with my wife) and so not having to worry about all of our photos / data / auto-backups is worth it for the $9.99/month we pay.

 

[Sam99999]

Thanks for the replies everyone

I do not backup to iCloud as my phone is 256gb and wifi is too slow in my country to allow such a huge amount of data to be backed up.

The data I deleted were long videos I had in my camera roll. but apparently, when the iPhone's storage is full and you try to delete large videos and pictures, even when you delete them from your recently deleted, your iPhone keeps them stored in "Other" storage, which in my case was taking up a whopping 40gb or so.

For future reference in case anyone faces the same issue, the fix is to put your phone in Airplane mode, and even tho it was respringing whenever I tried to unlock it, if you leave it on lock screen long enough without trying to unlock it, it will allow you a few minutes of usage before it resprings again. Take advantage of these few seconds to go to Settings > General > Date and Time and advance the date to more than one month (at least 32 days from the current date). This will trick the iPhone into purging all the unnecessary cache it keeps in the other data, in my case over 20gb of "Others" were gone. I cannot believe a multibillion dollar company like Apple still has not figured out a more direct approach to let users manage this pile of junk data in "Others" that has been one of the most complained about issues with iPhones on online forums for over 13 years now.

 

[throAU]

I do not backup to iCloud as my phone is 256gb and wifi is too slow in my country to allow such a huge amount of data to be backed up.

Be aware that icloud doesn't back up applications, only data.

Depending on how much of your space is apps vs. data, your backup may be a lot less than 256GB.

 

[chabig]

I do not backup to iCloud as my phone is 256gb and wifi is too slow in my country to allow such a huge amount of data to be backed up.

My internet speed averages 20Mbs and it's sufficient. I doubt yours could be much slower.

 

[throAU]

My internet speed averages 20Mbs and it's sufficient. I doubt yours could be much slower.

iCloud sync + backup is really handy for this as it is continual incremental backup basically, and has saved my butt more than once.

MDM policy on my iPad needed me to reset password and i thought i had the default 10 attempts to try and remember it, so rather than use my password manager i tried a few times from memory. But MDM policy initiated device wipe after 4 bad passcodes.

I was back up and running to the point where i accidentally device-wiped with icloud sync / icloud backup in like 30-45 minutes.

If i wasn't doing icloud backup/sync i have no idea how much data i would have lost - because like most people i'm pretty bad with manually backing things up. It would have been days or weeks at least.

That was the point where i decided to basically sync my mac account to icloud as well. If i lose a device i basically lose nothing now and i don't even need to do anything to recover. I just switch device (e.g., pull out the mac or the ipad depending on which device is unavailable) and carry on working for the most part. Worst case i purchase and log into a new device (but really, i have 2 older spare Macbooks here at home, i'd just log into one of those).

For my mac, I still have an external hard drive that i plug into at work for an off-site, off-network backup just in case my iCloud gets compromised or deleted, but that's the extent of my backup regime. Just plug disk in at work (via the USB C to A hub my yubikey is also plugged into) and leave it there.

If my house burns down and icloud gets owned, i'm still covered (filevault password for the time machine disk is in a different password manager).

I sleep a lot better at night knowing that a device failure/theft/etc. doesn't mean i lose anything.

 

[okkibs]

My internet speed averages 20Mbs and it's sufficient. I doubt yours could be much slower.

Relevant is upload, even here in the States in a somewhat rural area I get 8Mbps upload on paper and about 6Mbps in reality. That is the best connection available to my house so paying more money won't give me a faster contract. And even then I can't let any single device just hog all of it as it will slow down internet for the remaining devices to the point where websites don't load anymore. Backing up even just 150GB of files on an iPhone to iCloud would take over a week assuming there are no interruptions. Since the iPhone is with me when I leave the house and doesn't just sit at home 24 hours a day that backup would then run at night for nearly a month.

...versus backing up to the computer via USB taking 1-2 hours. The joy of Apple and Apple users assuming everyone who uses Apple devices has fast internet when in reality many millions of Americans don't.

 

[chabig]

Relevant is upload, even here in the States in a somewhat rural area I get 8Mbps upload on paper and about 6Mbps in reality.

I live on a small Pacific island. During all of the past year, my upload was capped at 5Mbps. That was enough to sync two iPhones, and keep my MacBook backed up to two cloud providers. The iPhones took care of themselves. The MacBook backups ran at midnight, four nights per week. Once the initial backups are completed, incremental backups would complete in anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. I never noticed because I was asleep.

 

[okkibs]

Once the initial backups are completed, incremental backups would complete in anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. I never noticed because I was asleep.

And that will certainly work fine if you already have that initial backup completed. This won't help OP as he has issues now, letting the phone sync for days or weeks won't be of much use right now. I never considered iCloud backups in the first place since local backups are very fast and they work over Wifi too. There is absolutely zero benefit using iCloud, in fact the local backup is more useful as it's included in my offsite backup and doesn't need any internet access whatsoever.

 

[throAU]

...versus backing up to the computer via USB taking 1-2 hours. The joy of Apple and Apple users assuming everyone who uses Apple devices has fast internet when in reality many millions of Americans don't.

this is where online backup (or even better, cloud sync) is a win - you can leave it running in the background and it will complete when it completes; no need to wait for it with a cable hanging out of your device.

the benefit if using icloud is definitely a thing, especially during recovery - you can start working from a new device pretty much immediately and only pull down the exact stuff you need as you need it. rather than waiting for a full device restore.

i've been saved by this myself, device wipe to back up and running in 30-40 minutes. In the mean-time i could access teh data via a different synced device, too.

That's way faster than screwing around with a laptop based backup and a cable.

 

[okkibs]

That's way faster than screwing around with a laptop based backup and a cable.

If you actually knew what you are talking about you'd know it works over Wifi backing up to the computer just fine. There is no "cable hanging out of your device" and it doesn't need to be a laptop either. In fact I haven't plugged in a cable to my iPhone at home in years as everything is done wirelessly including the charging. That iPhone backup is then automatically saved in the Mac's backup with Timemachine and a copy of the TM backups are stored offsite so that in the event of a robbery or fire all backups are retained.

Restoring 100GB+ over slow and unreliable internet is also not desirable, even over the slow USB2.0 speeds I can restore my iPhone in about 2 hours. Not to mention if the internet is extremely slow as it often is in the evenings or goes out entirely I'd be unable to restore the backup the same day at all.