Clear iOS Caches by Renting a Long Movie
Put simply, renting a title larger than the remaining capacity on your device forces iOS to use a hitherto undisclosed clean-up routine, thereby freeing-up space. Even if the download is way too big, it’ll still try to free-up space. Neat!
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It was originally claimed in the tip on Reddit that you won’t be able to actually rent the movie if you don’t have enough free space. In my tests I DID rent the movie, and got charged for it, but then I live in the UK where the rules are different compared to the US.
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By tapping the Storage & iCloud Usage heading you might see that some free space has already been freed-up, but you must now return to the iTunes Store app and attempt to rent the movie again! And again tap to visit the Settings app. Repeat several times. Each time more space will be freed-up.
There should just be a button in Settings to delete transient app data. Right now, the officially supported way seems to be to erase the device and restore it from backup, which takes a really long time.
It annoys me when the system is supposed to manage a resource automatically but doesn’t do so properly. Mac OS X still gets into situations where the system gets really slow, virtual memory has created huge swap files, and yet quitting every open app doesn’t seem to improve things. Most of the memory should be available, but it isn’t being taken advantage of. The only solution is to reboot.
Previously: iOS 9 Space Savings.
Update (2016-03-28): Michael Rockwell:
This works when trying to download a previously purchased movie, too. No need to initiate a rental.
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I run into this problem weekly on OS X. I don’t understand how it cannot be a solved problem when the cause and remedy are known. It’s also bitten me a few times on iOS causing me to delete apps to install updates, or rejigger my music playlist syncing to be able to take new photos, for instance.
