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Elbert C

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 23, 2008
528
127
AK, USA
My wife's iPhone 5s running iOS 12.1.4 is using up our internet daily allowance with no apps running. Double clicking on the Home button shows no apps listed. I turned off the wifi from all other devices except her 5s and watched our data slowly diminishing. Turning off the wifi on her iPhone, the data stops. Our daily limit is only 475 MB. Is there any way to find out what exactly is using up our data on her iPhone?
 

maxjohnson2

macrumors 6502
Mar 24, 2017
351
233
I'm not entirely clear, but are you saying your home WiFi internet have a daily limit of 475mb? If this is the case, you want to stop background running apps that is using data over WiFi. There are various services that sync over WiFi in the background and they don't have to show up in the recent list.

First go to the iCloud setting screen which is top of the Settings screen. Disable anything you don't want to sync from the phone to iCloud. The big one are Photos, iCloud Backup, and possibly iCloud Drive.

Also right below the iCloud setting is "iTunes & App Store". Turn off Automatic Download for all of the items in the list, especially 'Apps' and 'Updates' which are the main culprits.

Third, disable background running apps. Go to "General" -> "Background App Refresh". Disable all the apps in the list that you don't want to run the background. It's possible some of them might be using data in the background.

Also, if you use the Apple's Podcasts app. Disable "Sync Podcasts" so it don't automatically download new podcasts.
 
Last edited:

Elbert C

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 23, 2008
528
127
AK, USA
I'm not entirely clear, but are you saying your home WiFi internet have a daily limit of 475mb?
Yes, only 475 MB of download allowance. If it runs out we will need to wait 20 hours for it to refresh or buy tokens that we can use to refresh the allowance.
Third, disable background running apps. Go to "General" -> "Background App Refresh". Disable all the apps in the list that you don't want to run the background. It's possible some of them might be using data in the background.
I think this was what was using up the data. turned everything off and it stopped downloading.

Thanks for your help, maxjohnson2!
 

akash.nu

macrumors G4
May 26, 2016
10,825
16,938
Yes, only 475 MB of download allowance. If it runs out we will need to wait 20 hours for it to refresh or buy tokens that we can use to refresh the allowance.

I think this was what was using up the data. turned everything off and it stopped downloading.

Thanks for your help, maxjohnson2!

Wow a cap of 475 MB on home broadband?! What the hell?! Where do you live?!
 

Elbert C

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 23, 2008
528
127
AK, USA
Wow a cap of 475 MB on home broadband?! What the hell?! Where do you live?!
Rural Alaska, where we can only get satellite internet. The faster satellite services with better allowances like viasat, formerly exede, don't cover our area so we are stuck with what we have. Cell data has better data packages but it's a lot slower than our current satellite service.
 
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akash.nu

macrumors G4
May 26, 2016
10,825
16,938
Rural Alaska, where we can only get satellite internet. The faster satellite services with better allowances like viasat, formerly exede, don't cover our area so we are stuck with what we have. Cell data has better data packages but it's a lot slower than our current satellite service.

Damn! That’s tough life man.
 
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