Mystery Memory Usage

FundyBrian

FundyBrian

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Brian Townsend
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iPhone 8 Plus
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When my iPhone starts to get short of space I go looking for things delete. Besides the obvious excess of photos I look at apps I don't use or haven't used in some time.
It always makes more sense to target apps that use more memory space so I go to: Settings> General> Storage & iCloud usage> to the upper section for onboard storage - Manage Storage. There you get a list of all your apps, starting from the biggest memory use and descending to the least. If you look at one particular app it shows you how much total memory is being used. Then if you tap it it gives you a breakdown of the actual app size and the additional "documents & data" space the app uses. Where this gets interesting is noticing an app that is using a lot more space than seems reasonable. You discover that the app is using a whole lot of memory space for backups and documents. Here you can go to the app and check if some of this memory space can be freed up.
The most interesting finds are those apps where you find no place to release the accumulated saved memory space, apps that shouldn't have any documents & data at all. I have discovered a few apps that have memory leak problems. Deleting and reinstalling the app clears the space. But with additional usage this memory space builds up again. Then I contact the developer to find out what's going on. They are generally mystified at first but it points to a bug in the app concerning the releasing of memory after you use the app. They appreciate hearing about the problem so they can fix it.
A recent example: Simply HDR had 714 MB of documents & data but shouldn't. After deleting and reinstalling the app it goes down to 4K but after using the app for several pictures it has crept up again to 114MB.
 
Is this the 'cache' ? I'don't have an iPhone but when I bought an iPad I was amazed that there was no cache cleaner and the only way to delete the huge amounts of data that some apps build up, is to delete the app and then re-install.
This seems very long winded and tedious as on ahem.....other systems you can just delete the cache. Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
 
sinnerjohn said:
Is this the 'cache' ? I'don't have an iPhone but when I bought an iPad I was amazed that there was no cache cleaner and the only way to delete the huge amounts of data that some apps build up, is to delete the app and then re-install.
This seems very long winded and tedious as on ahem.....other systems you can just delete the cache. Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
Click to expand...

Mostly the apps that use cache space are online browser apps like Safari or the MobiTog app, in order to speed up screen drawing the second time you display a page. They do have provision to clear the cache. Several apps have their own workspace to store image files that only that app can use, for instance Leonardo or Photoshop Touch project files. These are generally the layered image files that the Photos app or Camera Roll cannot display, such as Photoshop psd files. These are saved in a special area so they can be transferred to your computer for further editing on the computer. There is always some way to delete these project files. Enlight also creates its own editable project files and you can set the maximum number of project files as well as delete them after transferring them to your computer.
When an app allows you to save your own presets, these, too, end up in "documents & data" and you can delete them as well. As far as I can tell there isn't any group or collective cache space that can be deleted en-mass.
The issue I'm addressing is apps that aren't supposed to have any project files or presets to save and yet somehow they gradually accumulate some memory space. This is a coding problem or bug of not releasing memory after it has been temporarily used.
Some apps save their own high quality files and these need to be edited in-app for best results and the final version exported to the more generic system format, or saved directly to the computer via iTunes or iCloud.
It's always worth checking how many project files have been saved since they tend to add up.
 
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