I ran into the same mess on my iPhone. Storage said apps were small, but ‘Documents and Data’ was huge, like 20 GB huge. It looked broken.
What Apple calls ‘Documents and Data’ is all the extra stuff apps keep around. Not the app itself. The leftovers. Login tokens, site data, cookies, download scraps, cached images, cached video, old temp files. Social apps are bad for this. If you spend 30 minutes in Instagram or Facebook, your phone stores a pile of media so scrolling feels faster later. Weeks pass, and the pile gets dumb big.
The annoying part is Apple does not give you one clean cache button for most apps. So you end up checking things one by one.
If you want the short version, this is what I did.
- For Safari, open Settings, then Safari, then tap ‘Clear History and Website Data’.
- For some apps, check inside the app itself. Facebook, for example, has browser settings where you can clear cookies and cache.
- For stubborn apps, delete the app fully and install it again.
- Do not rely on Offload App if your goal is storage cleanup. Offloading removes the app binary, but keeps the app data.
- In Photos, empty ‘Recently Deleted’. If you skip this, the space is still in use.
- Check Files too. Its ‘Recently Deleted’ folder catches a lot of people.
That delete-and-reinstall step fixed the worst offenders for me. Streaming apps, social apps, podcast apps, sometimes even messaging apps. A 300 MB app turns into 4 GB after enough use. I saw it over and over.
Photos is where people get tripped up most. You delete a bunch of pictures, then storage barely changes. Usually the reason is simple. The photos are still sitting in ‘Recently Deleted’ for around 30 days. Shared albums and old synced stuff also seem to leave behind local data. I had this with thumbnails sticking around longer than I expected.
When my phone got close to full, performance dropped in a way I could feel. Camera opened slow. Apps paused when switching. Random storage warnings kept popping up. It was not subtle. iPhones need free space to do normal background work, and when that space gets squeezed, the whole thing starts acting tired.
In my case, the photo library was the main problem. I tried cleaning it by hand and quit after a few minutes. Too many duplicates, too many screenshots, too many giant videos I forgot about.
I ended up using Clever Cleaner. What stood out to me was the file-size sorting. The ‘Heavies’ section made it easy to spot the stuff wasting the most space fast. One old 4K clip was over 1 GB. I also used the ‘Similars’ section to remove near-duplicate shots, which helped more than I expected because I had bursts of the same photo all over the place.
The useful part was seeing the storage numbers before deleting anything. No guessing. I could tell what each screenshot or video was costing me. I also liked that it processed the library on-device, since I do not want my photos sent off somewhere.
After I cleared roughly 10 GB of large videos and repeat shots, the Photos storage dropped fast and the phone felt quicker again. Not magic, still the same phone, but the lag eased up enough for me to notice it right away.
So yes, clearing this stuff is safe. You might need to sign in again. Some pages or media will load slower the first time after cleanup. Fine trade, in my opinion.
If your iPhone storage looks wrong, start here:
- Clear Safari history and website data
- Check app-specific cache settings
- Delete and reinstall bloated apps
- Empty Recently Deleted in Photos
- Empty Recently Deleted in Files
- Review your photo library for huge videos, duplicates, and screenshots
That was the only approach that worked for me without wasting a whole evening poking around settings.