Issue with Apple Watch storage constantly filling up.

1972 Views 6 Replies 3 Participants Last post by PirateMyke, Jun 22, 2021

PirateMyke

Discussion Starter · Mar 4, 2021 (Edited)

Hello,

I'm having an issue with my wife's Apple Watch Series 1 and was hoping someone here may be able to help me as my 2 attempts at Apple support helping me and my own troubleshooting has not solved anything thus far. What happens is that the watch's internal storage get's completely full with who knows what. I've checked to see what is using up the space, but when I add everything up that's taking up space together I get less than 200MB used, and because the watch's storage is full it then starts not working properly (like not being able to erase messages, silence alarms, and constantly getting a warning that says the storage is full...etc). I've tried so many things to try and remedy this...including,

Factory resetting the Apple Watch and then setting it up as a new device on her iPhone XS.
Checking that her phone is not syncing over any photos, music, and other, and also making sure it only has the default Apple Watch apps installed on it.
Resetting her iPhone, Resetting the watch, and then setting up both the iPhone and Apple Watch as new devices.
Getting a brand new iPhone 12 Pro (don't worry she wanted to get one anyways, lol) and setting that up and then setting up the Apple Watch as a new device while also doing point 2 above.
Checking her iCloud storage and wiping anything that we think would maybe upload to the watch (iMessage, reminders, etc).
Signing out of iCloud on all her Apple devices, and then signing back into iCloud on all her devices.
Restarting the Phone and Watch multiple times.
Bring it into the Apple Store and have them run a diagnostics on it only for everything to be "fine".

I've even tried to sync her Apple Watch to my iPhone and magically this DID fix the issue. Attached to my iPhone it no longer syncs a bunch of random stuff and no longer gets full. So that rules it out being an issue with the Watch's hardware.

I've also tried syncing my Apple Watch on her iPhone and it WILL do the same completely filling up of the storage capacity. Lastly I've wiped her old iPhone XS (as she now has a brand new iPhone 12 Pro) and set that up as a new device, logged into it with MY apple id, synced the Apple Watch and it worked fine. No syncing weirdness filling up the watch.

This makes me think that the issue maybe has to do with her iCloud account. But like I've already stated...I've cleared most of it out except Phone backups, photos (which I don't sync to the watch), and her safari bookmarks and such. I'm not sure what else to try or what to do, was hoping someone here maybe could help me out. Maybe I missed trying something? Maybe you've had a similar issue and were able to resolve it. Please help, would really appreciate getting this darn watch working again.

Thanks.

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polywog

· #2 · Mar 4, 2021

Only thing I can think of is just about everything by default is set to "Mirror iPhone," including Calendar, reminders and Mail. Maybe her inbox is full up? Or she has an impressive collection of Calendars?

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PirateMyke

Discussion Starter · #3 · Mar 9, 2021

polywog said:
Only thing I can think of is just about everything by default is set to "Mirror iPhone," including Calendar, reminders and Mail. Maybe her inbox is full up? Or she has an impressive collection of Calendars?

I thought that too, but she uses Outlook for her email, and Google Calendar for her calendars. I do think she does use reminders a bit but I doubt her maybe 10 reminders are going to take up 4+GB 🤷🏼‍♂️

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polywog

· #4 · Mar 9, 2021

PirateMyke said:
I thought that too, but she uses Outlook for her email, and Google Calendar for her calendars.

Does she have apps installed for Outlook and google calendar? Wondering if they might have Watch apps, too, and those are eating space vs. when you pair with your phone.

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PirateMyke

Discussion Starter · #5 · Mar 9, 2021

polywog said:
Does she have apps installed for Outlook and google calendar? Wondering if they might have Watch apps, too, and those are eating space vs. when you pair with your phone.

She is only using the default apps that come pre-installed on the Apple Watch. All available 3rd party apps we're not installing.

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csonni

· #6 · Mar 22, 2021

I always have issues with my Series 3 as well. Always an issue trying to update, telling me my Watch is too full.

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PirateMyke

Discussion Starter · #7 · Jun 22, 2021 (Edited)

UPDATE

So after many hours of trying to fix this issue on my wife's watch I eventually did. What finally did the trick was wiping everything from her iCloud storage. This included all phone backups, photo backups, iMessage, ect. We wiped everything we were able to. After wiping all that data, there was still something taking up 6.2GB labelled as "Other". To get rid of the "other" I tried downgrading her extra iCloud storage tier back to the free tier. After doing that we had to wait for the paid tier to expire, once that happened the 6.2GB of "Other" data showed up as 6.2GB of reminders (which btw is next to impossible but okay sure apple). We then deleted the 6.2GB of "reminders" so that her iCloud was now only using 50MB of the 5GB total (so pretty much nothing. Then we factory reset the watch and set it up as a new device again. After the watch was setup the issues were gone.

It looks like this 6.2GB of "Other" and then "Reminders" was the issue. If the data was being tagged as reminders (whether it actually was or not) it would make sense why the watches storage would always get completely full. Reminders are auto syncing to Apple Watches, so that explains why setting up the watch multiple times resulted in maxed out storage so many times. Once that data was finally wiped, the issue was gone.

I've reported this issue to Apple and they say they will look into it to potentially fix it. Hopefully this helps anyone else having this or similar issues.

Here are the steps I followed to finally fix the issue,

Opened the Settings app on iPhone.
Opened my Apple ID > then iCloud > Then Manage Storage.
Removed anything that was taking up space on iCloud (for example iMessage, Backups, Photos...ect) PLEASE NOTE: You may need to do this step multiple times.
Downgraded my upgraded iCloud storage tier to the 5GB FREE tier.
Wait however many days it takes for the paid iCloud storage tier to expire thus reverting back to the free 5GB tier.
Opened the Settings app on iPhone.
Opened my Apple ID > then iCloud > Then Manage Storage.
Removed anything that was taking up space on iCloud (for example iMessage, Backups, Photos...ect)

At this point you should have pretty much nothing on iCloud. In my case I was only using 50MB of the 5GB available with the free tier.

Factory reset Apple Watch
Setup Apple Watch as a new device

And that's it!

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