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I have an 16G iPhone 5s with iOS 10.1 that is very quickly eating up space to "Zero KB". When checked in "Manage Storage" the apps definately doesn't add up to 11.9 GB.

When I try to remove some of largest apps, free space appears but shortly after is back to "Zero KB".

When connected to iTunes Audio + Photos + Apps + Documents & Data + Other + Free adds up to less than 7GB only.

Has anybody experienced anything similar or has any clue about where to look for a solution?

Edit: Found similar symptoms described in https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/538v68/after_ios_10_update_storage_available_keeps/

Edit 2: I tried to delete some of recently updated apps to see if anyone of the could be causing the issues. The apps were: Pokemon Go, Hooks, Skype, 9GAG, Twitter, JIRA Cloud, Audible, Endomondo, Netflix, Google maps, Instagram, Taxify. It looks as uninstalling an reinstalling them might have restored small part of the lost storage space, but definately not all. Will continue to investigate and report

iTunes screenshot

iPhone screenshot

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  • Do you have iCloud Photo Library enabled? Do you use Apple Music/iTunes Match/iCloud Music Library?
    – tubedogg
    Oct 30, 2016 at 19:17
  • @tubedogg, iCloud Photo Library - yes, Apple Music/iTunes Match/iCloud Music Library - no
    – ULazdins
    Oct 31, 2016 at 7:35
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    Is "Optimize iPhone Storage" checked on the Photos app settings page? That helps. Anyway, Instagram, 9gag, Netflix (maybe others, I haven't used all the apps you list) will create caché that will slowly fill your phone; each app might or might not have an option to clear it.
    – Jaime Santa Cruz
    Nov 3, 2016 at 3:42
  • I suppose that in each of these cases the data would still show as "Photos" or "Apps", right? But as you can see in iTunes screenshot Photos, Apps and other pieces does not add up to 12 GB, but less
    – ULazdins
    Nov 3, 2016 at 6:32

2 Answers 2

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I had the same issue on the iPhone 5s and iOS 10.1.1.

Tried every space cleanup tip/hack, Removed all the unused applications, Cleared caches, Removed pictures, videos and music.

Still I was always back at "Zero KB" of available internal storage.

But when I connected the phone to iTunes (which I rarely do) to get the storage allocation by category I noticed most of the sapce was getting eaten up by the Other category has reached 9.7GB (out of 16GB theoretical capacity).

I also got the prompt saying an update to 10.1.1 was available but it couldn't update anyways as 600MB of free space was needed. I started thinking I had a bad update on my phone or corrupted iOS.

I found this article on the Apple Support page https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7467540?language=en said I might need to clear all data/settings then restore from a backup if the Other category is taking more than 2GB of space.

I followed this process https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201274 to clear everything and restore from an iTunes backup.

Issue fixed!

After restoring the backup and reinstalling the 10.1.1 update I now had 9,54GB of available storage.

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  • The answer is a bit too late, because I did a clean install and got back some 7GB. Nevertheless I have no reason not to accept this answer, I will wait for a few weeks and will do that. Thanks!
    – ULazdins
    Nov 28, 2016 at 20:37
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I've similar issue on my iPad mini 2 for quite a while. I'm not sure what caused it, but have read that iOS would free spaces when needed. That means, the free space we see in the settings is actually not accurate. There are some disk cleaning apps and should "force" iOS free the spaces. I am using an app called "memory & disk scanner pro", and it can do the job. You may try it or some other similar apps.

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