Real storage capacity

[Sherlock Holmes]

Last week I bought an IPad mini 4 cellular 64 GB - my first Apple device ever.

I started installing a few apps and I wanted to know how much space they take up. I checked it's storage capacity (General > About) and it read Capacity 55,6 GB, Available 50,3 GB. I take it this means the operating system iOs 9.3 uses 8,4 GB and the apps I installed + some photo's use 5,3 GB.

Just now I added 2 navigation apps (Navmii and ViewRanger) including their offline maps. I know some maps take a lot of storage space, so I wanted to check what is left now. But it still says Capacity 55,6 GB, Available 50,3 GB. This can't be right, can it ?

Is there a way to force iOs into showing the real available space ?

Better still : is there some 'independent' analytics app out there that can monitor what iOs is doing ?

Regards

 

[scifan57]

Have you tried force closing the Settings app and checking again?
The operating system and the stock apps are why the available capacity is always less than the full capacity.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Hmmm ... As I said, this is my first ever experience with Apple software.
What is 'force closing' ? How do you do that ?

 

[J. A.]

Double tap the Home button to show the App Switcher. It looks like this:

Look for the Settings app, and slide the thumbnail towards the top of the screen, so that it disappears from the App Switcher.

 

[scifan57]

Hmmm ... As I said, this is my first ever experience with Apple software.
What is 'force closing' ? How do you do that ?

Double tap the home button or swipe up on the screen with four fingers. You'll reveal a row of thumbnails of all currently open apps. Swipe up on the thumbnail of the app you wish to force close. This should normally be done only when an app is misbehaving as opening an app from scratch consumes considerably more battery power and processor resources. Once you've force closed the Settings app check to see if there's any difference in available storage.

 

[giradman]

Last week I bought an IPad mini 4 cellular 64 GB - my first Apple device ever.

I started installing a few apps and I wanted to know how much space they take up. I checked it's storage capacity (General > About) and it read Capacity 55,6 GB, Available 50,3 GB. I take it this means the operating system iOs 9.3 uses 8,4 GB and the apps I installed + some photo's use 5,3 GB.

Just now I added 2 navigation apps (Navmii and ViewRanger) including their offline maps. I know some maps take a lot of storage space, so I wanted to check what is left now. But it still says Capacity 55,6 GB, Available 50,3 GB. This can't be right, can it ?

Is there a way to force iOs into showing the real available space ?

Better still : is there some 'independent' analytics app out there that can monitor what iOs is doing ?

Hi Sherlock.... - welcome to the forum! You've already received some excellent comments, but let me add a few more that might help you better understand these storage statistics:

First, I have a 64 GB iPad Air 2, and in Settings, the capacity is reported as 55.8 GB - this in part relates to how the GB is calculated, i.e. whether using the decimal or binary system - see quote below (Source), the difference is a 1.074 ratio, i.e. you bought a 64 GB device (using base 10), but when divided by that ratio, the amount is reduced to 59.6 GB as on my iPad which calculates the storage using base 2 - the other 'lost' 4 GBs on my iPad is due to the iOS and likely other system files.

Second, I'm not sure why when the two apps added to your iPad did not reduce the reported storage - a 'Restart' or a 'Reset' of the device would likely show the correct amount - also you can go into Settings -> General -> Storage & iCloud Usage -> Manage Storage (on the device not in the cloud); this will create a long list of the apps on your iPad (see a screen capture from my Air 2) - click on one the storage being used by that app is broken down in 'App Size' & 'Documents & Data'.

Finally, I have several utility apps on my iPad which will show the used & available capacity on my device, and many other specs but don't do much more than the iOS - I can provide a few names or simply go to the App Store and search on 'iPad Storage' - there will be plenty of quite varied hits that you might want to explore? Also, plugging you iPad into a computer using iTunes will provide a 'bar graph' of your current storage and the general categories of what is using its capacity. Dave

When you view the storage capacity of your iPod, iPhone, iPad, or other electronic devices within its operating system, the capacity is reported using the the binary system (base 2) of measurement. In binary, 1 GB is calculated as 1,073,741,824 bytes.

For example: The way decimal and binary numeral systems measure a GB is what causes a 32 GB storage device to appear as approximately 28 GB when detailed by its operating system, even though the storage device still has 32 billion bytes (not 28 billion bytes), as reported.

.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Hi Sherlock.... - welcome to the forum! You've already received some excellent comments, but let me add a few more that might help you better understand these storage statistics:

First, I have a 64 GB iPad Air 2, and in Settings, the capacity is reported as 55.8 GB - this in part relates to how the GB is calculated, i.e. whether using the decimal or binary system - see quote below (Source), the difference is a 1.074 ratio, i.e. you bought a 64 GB device (using base 10), but when divided by that ratio, the amount is reduced to 59.6 GB as on my iPad which calculates the storage using base 2 - the other 'lost' 4 GBs on my iPad is due to the iOS and likely other system files.

Second, I'm not sure why when the two apps added to your iPad did not reduce the reported storage - a 'Restart' or a 'Reset' of the device would likely show the correct amount - also you can go into Settings -> General -> Storage & iCloud Usage -> Manage Storage (on the device not in the cloud); this will create a long list of the apps on your iPad (see a screen capture from my Air 2) - click on one the storage being used by that app is broken down in 'App Size' & 'Documents & Data'.

Finally, I have several utility apps on my iPad which will show the used & available capacity on my device, and many other specs but don't do much more than the iOS - I can provide a few names or simply go to the App Store and search on 'iPad Storage' - there will be plenty of quite varied hits that you might want to explore? Also, plugging you iPad into a computer using iTunes will provide a 'bar graph' of your current storage and the general categories of what is using its capacity. Dave


.
View attachment 71054

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Hi all.

Already thanks for the swift replies. I will look further into the problem tomorrow - have a lot to do today.
I already did manage the 'force closing' and restarting General, but still got Available 50,3 GB. Then I installed one more App and afterwards got Available 50,3 GB again. So the problem is still there.

Come and see tomorrow for the next episode.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

I think I figured out a couple of things. I followed Dave's advice and installed 2 monitoring app's - SystemInfo and SystemTools. Then I compared the results in iPad > About with those two.

There were already some differences.

Then I removed Navmii, a navigation app I was testing. And now iPad > About showed a difference indeed. As you know, the reason why I started this thread was that it showed no difference after I had removed a couple of app's, and I know those were 'small size' one's.

So I had an idea and removed SystemTools next - also a small program. And Lo ! iPad > About does not show an increased available size. But SystemInfo does. Please find my 'discoveries' in the table below.

I think iPad's build in disk manager (if I may call it so) just rounds up or down to the nearest half or full Gigabyte. Well, who cares about some meagre Megabytes in these times of Giga- and Terabytes ? Proof of that I found in Settings -> General -> Storage & iCloud Usage. I have another navigation app : Sygic. The list with app's says it occupies 1,0 GB, but when you tap to see the storage, it reads 930 MB. A mere 9% difference ? I consider that to be a lot.

And what's more, the authors of various monitoring app's also apply different rounding rules or options. I have made an .XLS spreadsheet with the values I found, but when I try to upload the file this forum refuses : "The uploaded file does not have an allowed extension." Is there a way to upload .XLS files ?

There seems to be no way to find out how much storage space even one single app 'exactly' occupies. Or is there a particular app out there ?
Not that this is perhaps of so much importance, but it would be nice to be able to know. I have written a couple of programs some 10 years ago and I could state the size of them to a single byte.

 

[giradman]

Hi Sherlock..... - thanks for the additional information above - many of these apps are MBs in size and 'rounding off' could certainly show differences between how capacity is measured; e.g. quoted below are my iPad results this morning - the top two, 16.4 vs. 16.58 are what the iPad is reporting compared to the iPad cabled to iTunes on my MBPro; the last two are from apps on my iPad - the greatest difference 1.4 GBs.'

Concerning your question "There seems to be no way to find out how much storage space even one single app 'exactly' occupies," an answer was already provided in my previous post, i.e. go to manage iPad storage in settings (see previous screen capture) - my Zino app shows 2.2 GB of storage (of course, most are my downloaded mags) - by pressing the app, the image below is shown which splits this amount into that occupied by the app itself vs. the Documents & Data.

Finally, as to posting a spreadsheet in .XLS format, I'm assuming that you are using Excel on a Windows PC? You could export to another format, such as PDF or do a screen capture, resize, and upload as an image - on my iPad using Numbers, I would do a screen capture (quick press of HOME & ON-OFF buttons) and AirDrop to my laptop, where I do most of my forum posting; on my MBPro, I would either export as a PDF or do a selected screen capture (SHIFT-CMD-4). Dave

iPad - free storage (GB)
- 16.4 in Settings on iPad
- 16.58 in iTunes on MBPro
- 17.8 in DeviceStats - iPad app
- 16.57 Snap Stats - iPad app

.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Hi Dave.

I could of course send you those results I did put in that XLS file, but I think it won't be necessary as we know now that there is a "rounding off" issue. Well, calling it an 'issue' is perhaps even too strong because the values do not differ widely. Yesterday I tested three more apps and each time found slightly different results. It all depends of course on the algorithm the app's developer wrote. So as long as this doesn't lead to users experiencing major storage problems, I rest my case.

As for the 'exact size' thing : Oops !! I had only eyes for the Documents & Data part and overlooked the App Size mentioned next to the app's icon. Sorry about that.

Thanks for your time and effort.