Thinking I might eventually decide to update to iOS 17 Beta 3, I was browsing around the storage section and looking for things I could delete. I then decided to delete Alex, before which the available storage was shown as 5.7 something GB. After deleting Alex, though, the available storage was shown as 5.91 GB. Alex appeared to be taking up 843 MB but deleting it didn't free up that much space. This often happens when I delete other things.
Comments
The issue still exists but does not attract enough attention
Before uninstalling Youtube:
After going to Settings>General>iPhone Storage
After selecting Youtube to view how much space the app and its documents are taking up:
After removing (not deleting) Youtube:
- Used: 52,01 GB of 64 GB
Do note that this is only one example that already suffices to prove how weird this bug is, but this is the case with all the other apps.I've Experienced This Too...
This has happened on my iPhone 7, but I'm not sure why. What's more, it seems that even after re-calibrating the amount of available free storage it is wrong. On the one hand this isn't a deal-breaker for me at least, but otoh it's something that needs to be looked into. It looks like I might have a bit more me time this week, so I'm actually going to try and report this to Apple Accessibility.
I wonder. . .
I wonder if the feature that allows us to "unload unused apps" is messing with this. If you have this feature enabled, the device will temporarily uninstall/remove an app due to inactivity. It also leaves "data" behind in case you want to start using the app again.
Regardless if you have this setting on or not (because somebody will absolutely comment on that very thing), I am wondering if apps you manually uninstall/remove are still leaving chunks of data behind, which would in turn give perceivably inaccurate readings of free space/storage in use?
Thoughts? 🤨
Ekaj
The iPhone 7 is long out of support by apple. I believe that calling Apple accessibility or emailing them would actually confuse things. At the very least they’re going to say that they can’t provide any support because of the overall age of the device and it’s inability to run the most recent software. At this point, you have what you have and it’s not fair to expect them to do anything. The iPhone 7 in your possession might be working, but Apple has essentially moved on.
Why contact Apple Accessibility?
I doubt this has anything to do with accessibility. Just take a screenshot and have it described by a sighted person or AI. The sighted should also see the inaccurate values.
Recalabration and/or removing the data from offloaded apps?
Hello,
First, how would you recallabrate your iDevice for the storage, and is it accessable? I hope you won't have to start from scratch as I'll need help with this. Secondly, how do you literally dump out the data from those offloaded apps? Where would said data be stored, is my last question here.
Thank you,
Ashleigh Piccinino
Reboot
Reboot after any of these changes. That should help with the strange storage issues.
Ekaj, it's time to upgrade to a more modern iOS device. While iOS 15 is still receiving security updates, you won't get any other bug fixes or features, and if history is any indication, iOS 15 support will stop when iOS 18 is released. Apple most likely won't help you anymore because that version of iOS hasn't been fully supported for a couple years now.
The problem with offloading apps
The thing is, I was shown the inaccurate values listed earlier before I uninstalled Youtube.
@Ashleigh
Ideally you would just choose to manually uninstall the app, and that would remove that off loaded data.
In theory.
Does that happen in actuality?
No idea. However people have been complaining about inaccurate storage numbers in both iOS and macOS for quite some time now.
There are a few measures of troubleshooting suggestions that are available in regards to this, however since the issue still persists several versions of iOS/macOS it is safe to say said troubleshooting measures are hit or miss, at best.
1. You could reset system settings, and reboot the phone. This sometimes fixes glitches within the OS causing issues to sort themselves out. It is not as daunting as my next suggestion, and is easy to recover from.
2. You could factory reset your device and restore it from a backup. Time consuming, however if the issue still persists then you have wasted a lot of time for nothing.
3. Factory restore and manually reinstall everything. This will take you a very long time to complete, dependent on the number of applications you use on your device. Really only needed if your backup is lost/corrupt. However, it is an option and easily available and accessible.
HTH. 😅
Off-Topic but a vital question
I would hesitate much less if I knew I had some tool that would backup all the Wi-Fi passwords for me and let me restore them after a factory reset. An app or built-in feature letting users make a backup by checking whatever they want included in it and leaving the rest unchecked, would also be fantastic. I do want to have all my VoiceOver preferences, but would not mind losing the apps that I could reinstall at any time.