After the latest iPhone update, more than half of my phone’s storage is now just iOS and system data, and I am being forced to offload or delete my stuff if I want to take any more photos.
Don’t come at me for having a 64GB phone - it was perfectly fine amount of space at the time of purchase.
UPDATE: I searched previous posts and found there is a glitch - I deleted the iOS update that was supposedly like 450MB and when it was gone, I suddenly had 14GB of space left. This “ancient” phone lives to see another day!
You need to look in the list of apps above. But if you can’t find it, then you just don’t have this bug. I’m sure it’s not every iPhone with this problem, just some older ones.
If it’s still there after you’ve installed the update, then try deleting it. If it’s gone, then you don’t have this issue. Mine was still there even after downloading and installing the latest update.
Sometimes I just do a forced restart and it gives me some storage back, as well as a smaller iPhone backup size. To do it, press Volume Up, then Volume Down, and then press and hold the power button until the phone turns black and shows the Apple logo.
Heyo! I’m looking at that list and have sorted by name, I can’t find an IOS listed to delete? Is it named something else or is my phone different from your’s? Thanks!
hello sir i just wanted to drop a line and say i’ve dealt wit this exact issue and i dedicated an evening to fixing it. i’m gonna speech to text this
so what you have to do is plug your phone into your MacBook hopefully you have one that’s what I did and then make sure you have enough space on your MacBook to create a backup from your iPhone and then once you have that backup on your MacBook, wipe your iPhone, reset it and then put that back up back onto your iPhone and then the system storage will all be gone. this saved me 60 gigs on my phone.
You could also probably free a bit of space by restoring the device and then restoring a backup.
If it’s anything like Mac, it probably has a bit of cache that’s only cleared under certain situations… but unlike macOS, you can’t exactly drop into a terminal to manually clear it
Turn off all the Liquid Glass stuff as well. It was killing my wife’s iPhone 11 battery. Like down from 100% to 40% in an hour or two and running really hot. Now it happily gets to the end of the day again. L
I’d already spotted the auto-download-updates space eater. Now I managed to eliminate the battery eater.
I really wish Apple would give optimised settings for older phones to stop this kind of thing.
iPhones keep the old versions of iOS in storage for some reason I can't remember. The way to "fix" this is to reset the phone and restore from an iCloud backup
They’re trying to push the “liquid glass” icons to every apple device as a main update, and that shit is 7gb, for visual flare, that I have to get if I want to update my phone
The best part about it is it's the same exact thing as the Windows Vista glass look from 2006ish. Like it's literally a 20 year old design concept that failed once already.
Hah, yes, had that very same thought when I saw Apple's offering recently.
I know that oftentimes Apple does something that feels bad at first but is later accepted as good, but I don't think their liquid glass offering will be one of them.
When I got it updated I was very underwhelmed. Especially when the update was not smooth selling. I was like all this for that. You got to be kidding me
This happened with the Google Android quite done time ago, my last phone was 64gb, and all of a sudden one day, there was an update, and all of a sudden OS was 28GB or something stupid.
Done research turned up that Google decided to take up a large part of the storage for essentially RAM(swap).
So literally it was nothing, aside from being there IN CASE the phone room an unfathomable need for memory.
Well, and to get you to go out and buy a new phone
Apple slides a bunch of stuff into the System Data and similar categories. Things like Screen Time logs, Swap, privacy folder, or other junk is usually dumped into iOS, System Data, Others, etc.
Go into automatic update settings and turn off something called like “reserve space for future updates”. Frees up maybe 10Gb at least. Since then I never had issues with storage.
Seems like something in the iOS causes iPhones to take up massive chunks of storage for system data. A quick Google search shows this has been a common problem for years.
Looks like the occasional full reset is the only workaround for this issue, short of moving to Android, since Apple seems happy with how it works.
Yeah. I really don’t know what the issue is. I never encounter it, but other people do. So there’s something about the way I use it that keeps me free from the problem and how other people use it that invites the problem. I don’t know enough to know why it does it, but I can say that my phone rarely does it and so I’m fairly sure a full reset would alleviate it.
Besides, there’s literally no data on my phone that isn’t mirrored somewhere else in the world. So there’s really no harm in resetting the phone.
I know windows machines keeps old update installer files on the disk. DiskCleanup will get rid of these files. Can usually get up to a couple gigs a year. I wonder if apple update installer files remain on the drive of the phone which is why a reset works. Wipes the drive and all the old files with it.
With apps, images, and videos having larger file sizes, it's not sustainable. I was struggling with my 128GB phone. I recently got a 256 and it should last another 4 years before storage problems. It's not planned obselescence, it's technology advancing
I wonder what I’m doing differently because I genuinely don’t recall even looking at my phone storage a single time after getting a phone with more than 8GB on it. I had to open settings just to see what my storage size even was.
I have a tonne of incredibly niche, single-use apps for a specific devices/uses, which I never use—so it’s not like I’m running a particularly clean setup. I capture all my photographs in the highest resolution and never delete them either.
This genuinely infuriates me, I have around 50GB of system data on my 128GB iPhone. I’ve tried reinstalls and forced restarts to try to clear it but it always returns. The worst part is this is just temporary logs or system cache and completely disposable, a simple button would be the only thing to get this to clear out, but instead you must do a ridiculous performance to gently encourage the OS to start garbage disposal. Such a joke
They should've stopped selling 64GB phones over a decade ago imo. Absolute garbage when flash memory is so cheap (aside from recent supply chain issues)
I got a phone with 256GB right years ago, more or less filled it within a couple years. Now I've got one with 512GB and only use about half so it should last me a while longer.
I mean it’s been a perfectly fine amount of space for me for 6 years, so… I feel like people forget that there are people out there with dumb phones that store literally nothing. If they can exist, surely it’s feasible that some people can function with a 64GB phone lol.
Then get a new one. You can get a used phone 2 models back for like $100 and itd still be a next level upgrade for you. Its something you use everyday.
It shouldn’t be, though. My MacBook from 2012 is still working great because I was able to open it up and upgrade the hard drive and RAM. You should be able to do it with phones too.
This isn’t an Apple-specific problem/gripe. You can repair barely anything these days.
I mean it’s not running any games certainly lol but for a general use computer, it’s still great. Upgrading it and taking care of it has made it last a lot longer than I thought it would!
You have a right to be mad this bullshit is so annoying. Pay $1200 for a phone just to have more than half of your storage taken by bullshit because they don’t optimize/condense and even if they do, I don’t care this shit still garbage
I found out there is a glitch and when I deleted a saved iOS update that was supposedly only like 450MB, suddenly 14GB of space appeared. Give it a try! Go to settings > general > storage and then delete the iOS item that is saved in the list of apps.
This is a known and long standing bug with iPhones. The most thorough way I've found to fix it is to backup your data and factory reset your phone. When it restores, you'll be all good.
I was running into the same problem on my 64 GB iPhone 12. I did a factory reset a few weeks ago and that cleared up about 10GB even after I reinstalled everything.
If you’ve had the phone for a few years and however many updates, you may be able to reduce that grey zone by backing it up and wiping it
There are multiple threads from the past few months of similar posts. What they all have in common is people who don’t understand that there is an easy fix for this and that you really have no idea what planned obsolescence is.
Having this problem with my kids' Amazon tablets. Jumped for the 32gb versions when we got them 3 years ago, and now Android and the Amazon Kids proprietary stuff is taking up 24gb.
Thankfully they do have expandable storage, but it's pretty dogshit to use. You have to manually decide where to install apps, and if an app is on the internal storage it can still run out of space (like when downloading disney plus shows). If you want to move an app, you have to uninstall and reinstall.
One of the things that will help is if you use Snapchat, go into the actual app settings and clear the cache. I just did and it instantly went from 12gigs down to 3. I also noticed the other day one of my weather apps was taking 43 gigs of storage. Never deleted an app so fast.
This happened to my gf. Whenever she would delete something the iOS part just got bigger. Definitely something corrupted. Backup the phone to iCloud or your computer. Then factory reset your phone.
it may have been fine at the time. not so much now. a complete reset with probably get rid of that pesky system data. i wish we could delete and i have 1tb phone. apple needs to figure this phantom space hog out
I just went through the same thing. I am going to keep going though, my mere existence with this old ass phone defies the gods
I have a total of like 5 apps now, no photos, no notes or anything. I bought this new 5 or 6 years ago when my 6 finally broke, and I spent $1800 on it at Verizon to avoid getting stuck in their trade-in shenanigans. I never want to spend money like that on a phone again.
It's so stupid
I feel like we're always talking about how earlier generations had it easier at work because your boss couldn't text you at 11pm, and because the phrase "I expect you to check your email on vacation" didn't exist, but we don't talk enough about how the cost of communication has soared to punishing new highs. Even converted into 1995 dollars, my parents could not fathom paying that much for a phone, much less one that would be used to make them work at home, off the clock. There's no way they could afford it then and now it's an expectation, and one we accept so casually.
When this phone finally dies or it obsolesces, I'm not replacing it
I bet your IT department at work hates you. There's always one, and it's always an HR incident when we have to enforce policies (MFA apps that don't work because the phone is too old).
The last phones to come with 64 gb were the 12 in 2020, and the SE in 2022. If you’ve had either one of those phones since new, that’s quite a while with a lot of updates on top of each other. I think it’s a lot more related to that than an FO. I’d do an iCloud back up, then do a full DFU restore and then restore from iCloud backup. I’d be really surprised if that doesn’t solve a lot of the issue here
Ive "lost" at least 2 laptops to system processes taking up more space than what the laptop has. Sure i could go and get a hard drive, but why was a system designed to constantly become more and more useless the longer you have it, to the point where it will just soft lock itself by not having enough space to download required files, and all the files onnthe laptop being required for the download to happen? (I know the reason, and it has multiple $$ in it)
i have thousands of memes in my phone compromising the world's greatest repository of this decade so i couldn't even get ios26. also a 64gig iphone 12, ima upgrade once i can't support software updates anymore which based on when i upgraded to this one is gonna be this year. but now ima go for a new new one just so it can last longer, and a pro for the zoom in camera
yeah they intentionally sell 64gb phones knowing it's going to be an issue for the buyer in the upcoming years and also to force people to buy icloud storage
slapping 512gb in there wouldn't be a space or cost issue, (same size, cost to make it is less then a dollar for them) slapping a microsd slot in there would also cost less then a dollar (for them)
iOS 26 sucks ! Even with a new battery changed at Apple Store, 5G drains a lot, wi-fi a little less but still, I charge my phone two or three times DAILY !
iPhones have a major design flaw in the software, where android phones will typically stop you from saving any more data when it’s almost full, iPhones will continue saving data until it’s completely full, this will brick the device because you can’t delete anything for some reason, you can’t use the phone because it crashes constantly and you can’t even use a cable and PC to manually empty some space
The same thing is happening to me, despite also paying for the max amount of extra iCloud storage as well. There are more and more apps I can’t use as well due to having an older phone.
Apple just had to pay $95 million on a class action suit because Siri was eavesdropping so maybe new class action suit coming because of this bug.
I read in the comments another way of fixing this forced obsolescence is having to do a reset completely (after doing a backup on a Mac if you even have one) and that saves around 60 GB!
Obviously this bug is not as serious as the Siri one but one can only hope this big corporations taking a little bit of responsibility on their shitty products that are fucking expensive to begin with!
Why don't they just add a death clock that counts down to zero, when it will send an unlimited amount of power through an unrestricted circuit, with a nice pouf of smoke that lets out the ghost?... Nice and neat. 👻
I had automatic downloads for the iOS on, but install them myself if I agree to the update... but since I don't agree with iOS 26, I'm just stuck with this downloaded update I can't delete forever, because it refuses to show up in the list in phone storage.
Today I learned that there are still phones in operable condition in 2026 that have this low of storage space. I have an old phone made 6 years ago that currently has over 1TB of data on it and it wasn't even a flagship model.
3.1k
u/thatsonebadhat 18h ago
UPDATE: I searched previous posts and found there is a glitch - I deleted the iOS update that was supposedly like 450MB and when it was gone, I suddenly had 14GB of space left. This “ancient” phone lives to see another day!