New updates will be added at the bottom of this story…….
Original story (published October 18, 2023) follows:
Apple Music is one of the most popular music streaming services available today. However, Apple Music is generating a lot of complaints due to an alleged memory leak issue on iOS and macOS devices.
Many complaints about the situation can be read on platforms such as Reddit. Through multiple reports, users reveal how the Apple Music application could be consuming much more storage space than it should.
Apple Music ‘steals’ a lot of storage space on iOS and macOS devices
Like other streaming services, Apple Music lets you download songs to storage so you can enjoy them offline. However, the service consumes many GB of capacity even without any songs downloaded.
The screenshots provided by users show us that Apple Music for iOS takes up around 3GB of space in the mildest cases. Meanwhile, in the most severe cases, we notice that up to 14 GB of storage space has been taken.
On macOS devices, the situation is even worse. Reports indicate that the music streaming service requires up to 53 GB of available storage space to generate its cache. This is a complete surplus.
This could be a memory leak issue
Of course, this situation should not be normal and users suspect it is a memory leak problem. However, reports have been appearing about this issue for about a month now, but even today the same situation persists.
To this day, Apple has not commented on this potential memory leak issue in Apple Music. Apple typically provides quick fixes to software issues that users report, so this is an unusual situation.
The problem appears to be directly related to the Apple Music service and not the operating systems themselves (iOS and macOS). Either way, it’s hard to firmly pin it down without an official statement from the company.
The problem was already present in the beta version of iOS 15
It should be noted that for those who participated in the iOS 15 beta phase, this isn’t exactly a new problem. The same situation was present at the time, with corresponding complaints from affected users.
It should be noted that, according to reports, even eliminating the music application on the device is not a solution to eliminate all occupied storage space. In these cases, the system does not offer the option to delete numbers.
Some macOS apps have a similar problem, but it may be unrelated
Reports of similar issues in macOS indicate that other applications may be experiencing a similar issue. However, the heart of the matter would be completely different.
Java-based apps (such as Minecraft Java) cause Java to produce a cache of about 100 GB in one instance. In that case, this seems to be a problem related to the way the application is programmed, which is a common situation in Java developments.
For now, all we can do is wait for Apple to offer a solution to the problem. As mentioned above, the complaints have been going on for a month. Therefore, the company should have already offered at least one explanation.
Update 1 (September 18, 2023)
2:14 PM (IST): It seems that the issue of Apple Music taking up too much storage space (more than 30 GB) is still present for (1, 2, 3) a portion of users running iOS 16 and 17.
Fortunately, there are some solutions that can help you fix this problem. You can view them below.
Solution 1: TLDR; Disabling iPad Apple Music ‘Sync Library’ and ‘Add Playlist Song’ immediately reduced system data storage from 30GB+ to 8GB (source)
Solution 2: The solution: Turn iCloud Music Library off and on again. Or you may need to factory reset the device and then restore it from your iCloud backup. (Source)
Article by Jean Leon
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