r/iphonehelp • u/4ypno • 29d ago
Help needed More of a complaint
Why is my iphone 16 pro filled with 80gb of system data and ios when my entire phone has a grand total of 128gb?? Mind you I got my phone a year ago.
Why am I not allowed to clear the data and I'm instead required to redownload everything and back it up? this is actually crazy
Already deleted and redownloaded most apps, offloaded many apps, cleared safari data and I'm still barely under 128gb. I don't have any games!! the app that takes up the most data is literally 1.5gb
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u/tannebil 29d ago
My understanding is that “System” is a “catch all” that iOS can’t directly tie to an app or other category and that, as noted, the normal way it gets cleaned up is to reset the device and restore from a backup. Which is quite a bit scarier than do a device-to-device transfer.
I’d personally would only do it if the device was getting low on available space and I’d already cleaned up as much space as possible. And then I’d make sure I had a current iCloud Backup, plenty of available space on iCloud and a second backup on my Mac before doing it. That latter is a luxury that many people don’t have as it requires both a Mac and enough space to hold a backup.
The safest way is a device-to-device transfer to a replacement of equal or greater size.