I solved the “system data” storage hogging mystery

Submitted by justachos t3_11vy7fo in iphone

In short, URL rich previews in Messages are stored permanently in iCloud under “Messages” but under “System Data” on iOS and MacOS devices.

It’s irritating behavior as there is no way to view which previews are taking up the most storage (often hundreds of MBs from a single URL) and thus no way to efficiently delete.

My solution which was able to drastically decrease storage usage on my Mac and iPhone from 80+ GBs to ~2 GBs:

  1. Download iMazing (or any 3rd party backup service)
  2. Backup Messages to your computer
  3. Export Messages as Excel files (or CSV)
  4. Backup Message attachments as you see fit
  5. Set iPhone and Mac to delete messages after 1 year as opposed to storing them forever.
  6. Save Excel/CSV files to Google Drive or another service of your choice so they are indexed and searchable (incredibly only 50 MB for 3000+ chats)
  7. Repeat yearly to ensure no messages are lost
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Comments

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this_for_loona t1_jcvhcu3 wrote

How did you figure this out?

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justachos OP t1_jcvhxz7 wrote

On macOS there is a parallel "system data" problem, I searched for the oversized folder, found a bunch of cache files with an unusual extension, found an online converter and realized it was a URL preview from messages.

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this_for_loona t1_jcvjje4 wrote

Damn. Thats pretty clever. Now i gotta try this out.

What ios backup software do you recommend?

And i assume there's no way to put the messages back if this turns out to not fix my issue?

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00cho t1_jcvldfp wrote

In the OP, it specifies iMazing, which is for backing up iOS.

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GhostGhazi t1_jcwc9w9 wrote

Imazing changed their license type and now it’s a rip off. It’s per serial number

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SomegalInCa t1_jcvyjc2 wrote

Doesn’t deleting message’s conversation/ bubble get rid of them ? (Well in 30days cause it sits in recently deleted)

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justachos OP t1_jcvzcro wrote

In theory it should, but it often does not. The data will remain on your phone and be continually backed up into iCloud. Further, there is no easy way to go back and delete all URLs. Lastly, you would be losing that data permanently, while using the described backup method, you lose nothing.

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better_than_erza t1_jcyawu7 wrote

At some point is it easier to just reinstall the iOS on the phone? I’ve been thinking about doing that.

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Newphonewhodis42 t1_jczdbae wrote

There is not only one System data bug, the causes are multiples.

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justachos OP t1_jczevbn wrote

Please tell!

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Newphonewhodis42 t1_jczfcgu wrote

System data is simply un-categorized files, so if any part of the system is not correctly cleaning up or just buggy, System data will grow.

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djmexi t1_jcxikle wrote

You discovered deleting data frees up space? Just like how Christopher Columbus discovered America. 🙄

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