Surely while you were looking at the storage consumption of the device you wondered what is the system data on iPhone and iPad ? But another of the great doubts is Can they be erased to obtain more storage space? We will try to answer all those doubts in the following article..
What is system data on iPhone and iPad?
Both iOS and iPadOS have a very organized storage section that allows us to visualize the consumption so that the user has a clear idea in each category (Applications, media, photos, iOS, etc.) guiding us through colors, we can see the amount of space that occupies each of these categories.
But what does the system data section include? Basically, everything that does not fall into the predefined categories. According to Apple, the storage category consists of non-removable items such as translation languages, fonts, dictionaries, Siri voices, general data, CloudKit database, logs, cache, and more. Basically, it is a single group that accumulates varied data that exists on the device..
How to view system data on iOS and iPadOS
The first thing we will have to do is go to "Settings". We will select the option "General" and then we will have to click on "Storage".
View data on Mac or Windows PC
We will connect the device to the computer. We will start iTunes and select the device. We can consult the storage consumption bar that is located at the bottom of the screen..
How to erase system data on iPhone and iPad
There are several ways to delete system data on iPhone and iPad. Obviously, the ideal would be to have a kind of dashboard to quickly view and erase all categories of data in the system; But there are alternative solutions that allow this job to be done, although it requires a bit of patience.
Clear app cache
It is always advisable to clear the application cache from time to time. In case we do not do it, an accumulation of cache data will begin to generate different problems in said app.
In order to delete the cache we will have to go to the application we want, then we go to Settings and look for the option to clear the cache.
If we see the screenshot that accompanies this article, we can see in the Spotify application that from "Storage" in "Settings" you can find the option to clear cache.
In case we still do not have enough space on our device, we can delete applications that we do not use, but keep our documents and data.
For this we are going to go to Settings and then to General. Here we will have to press Storage and we will find the option to download applications. We will simply have to enable it.
To stop downloading applications, we can go to Settings> App Store and disable the Download unused applications option. Another option would be to simply remove or reinstall the applications we have. Which will allow us to have a little more space available.
Clear browsing history and web data
Another way to prevent system data from taking up a large amount of storage is to delete your browsing and website history. Obviously, having a history saved makes things easier when entering a website, it is not a good idea to keep a history for too long.
Once every so often it is ideal to delete your browsing history; Not only does it allow us to keep every computer, but we also take care of our privacy. Additionally, it is essential for the browser to function properly.
Clear browsing history in Safari
For this we will have to open the Settings of our device and then go to> Safari> Delete history and website data.
Clear Chrome browsing history
We open the application, click on the icon with three dots at the bottom and we will have to choose History. Next, we are going to click on Clear browsing data; here we can choose the time range and then click on Clear browsing data again.
Remove attachments from large messages
The attachments in messages that are no longer needed, it is ideal to delete them. The Apple messages app allows us to easily and quickly keep track of the attachments of the messages and in this way, we can easily delete them.
For this, we are going to go to Settings and then we choose General> Storage.
Now we will have to click on the "Messages" option. In the Documents section, we will have to see the different categories such as Main Conversations, Photos and Videos. We just go to the specific category and remove all the attachments we don't want.
Reduce message history
Another interesting thing we can do is choose to delete the history of text messages every so often to keep the storage space on our device.
For this we will have to go to Settings> Messages and then click on the Keep messages section.
Here we can choose 30 days or 1 year instead of forever. It will also ask us for permissions to delete older messages. In this way from time to time, iOS will take care of deleting the messages for us.
Factory reset device
Basically, it would be doing a hard reset, resetting the device as if it were the first time we turned it on. Obviously, this removes all personal data and leaves the system as if it were the first time we were going to use it. Therefore, it is highly recommended to create a backup before proceeding, as all data will be deleted.
For this we are going to go to Settings and then we go to General> Reset. In the case of iOS 15 we will have to choose Transfer or Reset iPhone> Delete all content and settings.
Then we will simply have to wait for the device to restart and follow the instructions of the configuration wizard.
