Why iOS settings and iTunes report the storage usage differently?

Solution 1:

I reset my iPhone and recover the backup data. My all installed apps and data are seemingly maintained well, but its storage usage became changed: about 7 GB of new free space came out. Also, it’s reported in the same way by both iTunes and iOS settings.

I’m still not aware of the cause, but my problem was anyway solved.

Solution 2:

I have a 4 GB disparity between what shows on my iPhone 6 64 GB and what shows up in iTunes.

I propose that this is because of the iOS Operating System itself. While the phone is able to calculate the exact size of the OS and thus give a more accurate reading, iTunes doesn't have access to that data and assumes your phone just has that much more space.

Here's what you need to do -

1. If you're jailbroken, those additional files are definitely taking 'hidden' space that's not being accounted for. Think about removing the jailbreak.
2. If you're using an older iOS version, upgrade. The newer versions (8.1.3 and 8.3) take up less space.
3. Since you're connected to your iTunes anyways, try doing this - simply load up 1-2 GB of files from your computer to your phone (music/videos/random doc files). This will force your phone to acknowledge the space it actually has.

The last one, of course, is just for science.

Solution 3:

I just had this same issue, with a 3GB discrepancy between what iTunes and my iPhone were showing as free space. After looking through "Manage Storage" I realized that iTunes doesn't see the space taken up by downloading music for offline listening through apps like Spotify, but your iPhone does. The numbers matched almost perfectly.

Hope that helps.

Solution 4:

I've had this issue multiple times. My podcast app would show it is using 500MB of space but there were no saved podcasts. Same deal with several other apps. I had No photos on my phone nor did I have any music. Still, I only showed an available 600MB of space available on my phone.

After doing several hard restarts computer reboots and syncs, the only way to solve the problem is to restore the iphone. This gave me 4GB of free space and seemed to reset the memory allocation on most of my app discrepancies such as the podcast app.

I don't know what causes this but it is quite frustrating.

Solution 5:

An iOS application can mark data as "temporary", which means the data can be deleted when necessary. For example, if you download a podcast that you could download again at any time, the podcast app probably marks it as "temporary". Same with apps like Spotify; you don't actually lose anything if downloaded data is removed.

I think iTunes doesn't count that data because it's interested in how much you can copy to your phone (if there are 7GB that can be removed, then you can copy 7GB to the phone), but the phone reports the space as used, because it is actually used.

So the difference is data that is there, but that iOS is allowed to delete at any time.