When you check the storage space taken up by Apps on iPhone, you will find “Documents and Data” taking up a lot of storage space. You can find below the steps to clear or delete “Documents and Data” on iPhone.
What is “Documents and Data” On iPhone?
All the Apps installed on iPhone are allowed to store app related information like App Caches, Sign-in info, Message history and other information.
For the sake of convenience, the storage space occupied by App related information like cached data, sign-in info and others is labeled as “Documents and Data” by iPhone.
Why Delete “Documents & Data” on iPhone?
Depending on the App, the storage space occupied by its “Documents and Data” can end becoming larger than the storage space occupied by the App itself.
For example, the Snapchat App in the image below has a size of 60 MB, but its “Documents and Data” is taking up 343 MB of storage space.
In addition to storing data on iPhone, you will also “Documents and Data” associated with the Apps being stored in iCloud.
How to Delete Documents and Data on iPhone?
The simplest way to delete “Documents and Data” on iPhone is to delete the Apps generating the most amount of “Documents & Data” on your iPhone and re-install them back on your device.
While this may sound strange, this is currently the only way to delete app related “Documents and Data” on iPhone.
Step #1. Delete the App from iPhone
As mentioned above, the first step is to delete the App which is storing a large amounts of “Documents & Data” on your iPhone.
1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
2. On the Storage screen, scroll down and select the App for which you want to delete its Documents and Data.
3. On the next screen, scroll down and tap on the Delete App option.
On the confirmation pop-up, tap on the Delete option to confirm and this will delete the App along with all its “Documents and Data” from your iPhone.
Step #2. Reinstall Back the App on iPhone
After deleting the App, you can reinstall back the App on your iPhone by going to the App Store.
1. Open the App Store on your iPhone and type the name of deleted App in the search bar.
2. Once the App is located, select the App and tap on the install option, located next to the App.
3. Once the App is reinstalled, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > App Name.
As you can see in above image, the storage space taken up by the app has considerably reduced, going down from 95.7 MB to just 49 KB, when the same App is reinstalled back.
Similarly, you can go through other Apps and follow the steps to delete Documents and Data generated by other Apps on your iPhone.
Does Offloading the App Delete its “Documents & Data”?
You can find on the internet many websites advising users to Offload the App in order to delete its “Documents & Data” from iPhone.
However, offloading an App only deletes the space taken up by the App itself and does not Delete “Documents and Data” stored by the App on your device.
Delete Documents and Data From iCloud
As mentioned above, Apps end up storing “Documents and Data” on iCloud, in addition to storing it on the internal storage of your iPhone.
You can follow the step below to delete “Documents & Data” stored by the App in your iCloud account.
1. Open the Settings on your iPhone and tap on your Apple ID.
2. From the Apple ID screen, go to iCloud and tap on Manage storage option.
3. On the next screen, select the App for which you want to delete its “Documents and Data” From iCloud.
4. On the Apps info screen, tap on Delete Documents & Data option.
5. On the confirmation pop-up, tap on the Delete option to confirm.
This will delete Documents and Data from iCloud related to this particular app. You will have to repeat the above steps for other Apps, in order to clear iCloud Storage space.