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ZEEN0j

macrumors 68000
Sep 29, 2014
1,560
715
Your system storage is 895MB? Impossible. iOS itself is over 4GB. You must be looking at something different.

Rebooted my phone with new values.
 

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Mlrollin91

macrumors G5
Nov 20, 2008
14,122
10,111
Rebooted my phone with new values.
Something isnt right. What iOS version are you running. System storage is supposed to include iOS and all formatting. On a freshly restored iOS with nothing installed, its 8-10GB depending on the device.
 

ZEEN0j

macrumors 68000
Sep 29, 2014
1,560
715
Something isnt right. What iOS version are you running. System storage is supposed to include iOS and all formatting. On a freshly restored iOS with nothing installed, its 8-10GB depending on the device.

Latest non beta version. iPhone 8 Plus.
 
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ZEEN0j

macrumors 68000
Sep 29, 2014
1,560
715
Same. Both iPad Air 2 and 8 Plus.

I restored my iPad two days ago as new. 7.89GB system storage used with nothing installed.

Probably a bug with that whole category. Mine said 500mb (520 now) and some people have 50gb and up. I wouldn’t trust what it says.
 

Broken Hope

macrumors 68000
Jan 15, 2015
1,656
1,549
He’s wrong. It still shows as documents and data. You can view Facebook or Snapchat for confirmation as they cache everything.
He's not completely wrong, if I clear the cache on Tapatalk, or Twitter or other apps that allow me to clear their cache, the individual app storage doesn't decrease but my system size does.

Perhaps Facebook or Snapchat aren't setting their caches up right and it's being allocated as documents and data.
 

Mlrollin91

macrumors G5
Nov 20, 2008
14,122
10,111
He's not completely wrong, if I clear the cache on Tapatalk, or Twitter or other apps that allow me to clear their cache, the individual app storage doesn't decrease but my system size does.

Perhaps Facebook or Snapchat aren't setting their caches up right and it's being allocated as documents and data.

Cache isn't the same as documents and data. Cache is temporary system files, while documents and data are hardcoded into the app. Snapchat has its own cache cleaning button as well.
 

cynics

macrumors G4
Jan 8, 2012
11,959
2,154
Since unused space is wasted space iOS will cache near everything. When iOS knows certain data is no longer needed OR when space becomes a commodity it will let go of it.

Easy example is syncing with iTunes, a lot of diagnostic data and various other things are copied and sent to Apple (if opted in).

Pre sync

IMG_3734.jpg

Post sync

IMG_3735.jpg

Restarting the iOS device could clear some other stuff.

IMG_8A2657F5B823-1.jpeg

Regardless it will generally come back with time. sometimes not much time either....less than a day. This is only an actual problem when you NEED space and its not their because of system storage usage, which in my experience has never been the case.

Just keep in mind the amount of stuff that needs to be kept track of on the phone. I'm not sure if the data is contained here but spotlight search comes to mind. You can type something into the search field and it will scour through messages, emails, contacts, apps, etc etc to find what you are looking for in seconds generally sub 1 second.

Apple could do a better job breaking down "system" however my advice would be to ignore it if its not a problem. You aren't doing yourself a favor keeping 120 gb free on a 128gb phone...use all the space you paid for!
 

FyerFyer

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 14, 2015
366
84
Thanks guys

IOS seems to me, to be losing alot of what first made it good. It was small and not very complicated. Now, I seem to be getting daily updates from apps and monthly updates from Apple.

Either technology is moving too quickly to keep up or Apple is making alot of mistakes..
 
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G201

macrumors newbie
Jun 16, 2016
11
9
I experience the same issue and it’s really irritating. It’s about 7.5 GBs here on 16 GB device. I contacted Apple at first and they said it’s a normal issue that can be fixed easily by doing a restore. When I restored, it has decreased to about 6.2 GBs and has started to increase again reaching 7.5 GBs again. I don’t really know what to do about this. 7.5 GBs is nearly half my storage and they should really start working on an effective fix.
 

OriginalAppleGuy

Suspended
Sep 25, 2016
971
1,137
Virginia
I experience the same issue and it’s really irritating. It’s about 7.5 GBs here on 16 GB device. I contacted Apple at first and they said it’s a normal issue that can be fixed easily by doing a restore. When I restored, it has decreased to about 6.2 GBs and has started to increase again reaching 7.5 GBs again. I don’t really know what to do about this. 7.5 GBs is nearly half my storage and they should really start working on an effective fix.

You have the 16GB model?
 

fragment7

macrumors newbie
Apr 29, 2018
3
0
Iphone x 256, using filmic pro extensively
 

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KeanosMagicHat

macrumors 68000
May 18, 2012
1,559
556
Huge variance here from hundreds of megabytes to over 16 GB.

I’m assuming this is down to memory management/caching of some kind, so let’s hope iOS is a very, very clever at reducing this and releasing storage as it is needed.
 

fragment7

macrumors newbie
Apr 29, 2018
3
0
Well apparenrly since i deleted some videos from filmic pro, the system storage went down to 9ish gb, but the app says it has 142gb now! Which i doubt it has! there must be some kind of bug with 3rd party apps
 

WaruiKoohii

macrumors 6502
Oct 4, 2015
479
588
Boston
Mine is sitting at about 10GB right now.

A trick that I've found is that if you plug it into a computer and perform an iTunes backup (not an iCloud backup, it must be an iTunes backup), you can sometimes significantly reduce the size of System. Last time I did this it went from ~60GB to ~10GB.

I do automatic iCloud backups but from time to time I do an iTunes backup just to get System back in line.
 

fragment7

macrumors newbie
Apr 29, 2018
3
0
So after backing up filmic pro videos, the system storage went to normal.
 

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saturnotaku

macrumors 68000
Mar 4, 2013
1,978
97
To all of you who are seeing the massive system size, did you connect and sync your device with iTunes? I ask because I just bought a brand-new 5th-generation iPad. I updated to iOS 11.3.1, set it up as new, then connected it to iTunes to add about 10 GB worth of purchased videos. Even with no other apps installed, I saw that I had less than 10 GB of free space - 8 GB of which was taken up by system. I did a restore, connected to iTunes, and put on about 2 GB worth of other media. Within a day, system was taking up 3 GB of space.

I bring up iTunes as a common denominator because my iPhone 6 Plus has never been connected to iTunes. The phone I'm using right now was an insurance replacement that I restored from iCloud. It's currently on iOS 11.3 and doesn't even have a "system" entry.

20180502_182024000_iOS.jpg

What you're seeing is the bottom of the storage page. On my iPad, system is there and is currently occupying 3 GB. I'm going to try another restore, but this time not use iTunes to copy my purchased content onto it.
 

anyjungleinguy

macrumors 6502
Mar 6, 2012
308
217
I’m seeing the same thing.

iPhone X 64GB, system currently using just under 19GB.

I don’t want to have to do a restore...
 
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