I was looking through my hard drive space usage on my iPhone and noticed something peculiar with one of my apps. Looking through my app listing and going to Periscope, I noticed it was occupying 1gb of space on my iPhone when the app itself is only a mere 14mb to download from the app store.
To check your app usage, go to Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage
So what kind of information was the app saving on my phone? To find out if it saves any downloadable data or documents, I connected my iPhone to my iMac, started iTunes and looked at the Data and Documents section for Periscope, only to find it a blank slate. In other words, the app doesn’t store any downloadable content on your iPhone.
With that being covered, I simply deleted my app, and downloaded it again from the app store. As you can see from the screen cap below, the app now takes 14.8mb of space on my iPhone, as expected.
Next, I started the Periscope app and loaded all of its tabs to check if anything was astray. Everything looked normal. Looking at the screen cap below, you can now see the app has taken 30mb more space on my iPhone.
So what does this prove?
The Periscope app saves all your settings, and apparently lots of information from the saved broadcasts that you view. I remember some time ago that I was surprised I was able to watch saved broadcasts while underground in the Toronto subway system. This would indicate that the saved broadcasts you watch will eventually completely download to your iPhone if you give it enough time. This will inevitably take up some storage space. It just seems like these broadcasts do not delete themselves once you finish watching them.
It would also mean that if you don’t delete the app, it will just keep storing more and more broadcasts to your iPhone, eventually eating up all of your precious hard drive space!
I did this as an exercise to see what this app in particular saves on your iPhone. If you’re running out of space, it may be wise for you to delete and re-install the app to save some much needed space.
Moreover, it may be wise to take a look at your other apps to see whether they do the same thing. Just make sure that you don’t delete any Data and Documents from the apps that save information there, like VSCOcam and other photo editing apps. You can see if they do save data or documents by connecting your iPhone to a computer and looking at the App section within iTunes, and scrolling all the way down to the Data and Documents section.
Thank you for this. Any updates since this was written?
So do you know what can i do to solve this problem? ‘Delete the app’ is the only answer? Periscope are going to eat all of my storage!
Hi Chloe! Thanks for stopping by! As far as I know, unless Periscope has added a setting inside their app to refresh the cache, deleting the app and reinstalling it would be the only way to clear up space on your phone. I haven’t checked recently but this is assuming the most recent version of Periscope still behaves the same way as it did when I wrote this post. 🙂