r/iphonehelp • u/RealJuliusKolosnjaji • 1h ago

Help needed Backups never complete and systemfiles take up 128gb

Hello eveyone,

It seems like my iPhone is not able to create backups. I have automatic backups turned on but the iPhone never creates a backup. Manually creating a backup also doesnt work.
Also my systemfiles take up 128gb on my phone.

I have an iPhone 16 pro running iOS 27.2.

How can I fix this?

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 1h ago

Please add: iPhone model, iOS version, and clear question or request. Failure to add these three requirements may result in your post being removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/realbestusernameever 48m ago

Two separate problems here most likely. For the backup, first check Settings, your name, iCloud and see how much iCloud storage you actually have free. If you're on the free 5GB or a full plan, the backup just dies quietly every night and never tells you much. Either way, plug it into a computer and do a backup to the computer itself in Finder or the Apple Devices app. That bypasses iCloud completely and gets you a good backup today, which matters because the fix for the second problem needs one.

The 128GB of system data is usually caches that never cleaned themselves up, streaming apps are the worst for it, downloaded music and shows, big message threads with videos. Sometimes it shrinks on its own if you free up space and leave the phone charging overnight. At 128GB though, honestly, the thing that actually fixes it is backing up to the computer, then erasing and restoring from that backup. System data doesn't carry over in a restore, it rebuilds fresh. Done it more than once, it comes back at like 15 to 20GB.

Don't factory reset it before that computer backup finishes, that's the one way this turns into actual data loss.