iPhone 3GS usage at 5.3 GB...

[Deech]

In the Usage page in Settings, it says there are 5.3 GB used and 901 MB available. And Spotify is taking up 3.8 GB (even though the app is 11.5 MB). I have a lot of music but it's all offline. I'm confused as to why this is taking so much space. Do the songs need to be offline? Do I need to just delete things? I'm confused...

Thanks!

[George]

The app itself is taking up 11.5MB.
The remaining part of the 3.8GB is your offline synced music, and other local files that are synced through Spotify onto your device.

"Do the songs need to be offline?" - if you want to be able to listen when you've not got an internet connection (WiFi or 3G) then yes. If you only listen to your music when you've got a WiFi connection or have some kind of Data plan with your mobile provider, then you don't HAVE to have the music offline synced. Spotify will just stream the music when you want to listen to it if it's not offline synced. However, that might mean waiting for it to stream if you've got a low signal, or want to listen in high quality mode.

If you need to free up some space on your device then turn off offline syncing on some of your playlists.

On another note, users in this topic are complaining that the client builds up a cache that doesn't automatically clear and can take up a lot of space. The method of clearing the cache is to delete the Spotify app from your device and reinstall it from the App Store.

[Edit: to add the last bit about caching]

[Deech]

Thanks.

Again, everything is offline which is causing the confusion. I'll try deleting the app, but will I be able to synch to my computer and get everything back?

[George · Accepted solution]

If you delete the app. And then reinstall it, you'll be able to resync the playlists that you specifically want to listen to offline from within the Spotify app (or with a computer running Spotify on the same WiFi network). But if you've got a fair amount of playlists you want to listen to offline, it's going to take up quite a lot of room.

The Usage page in Settings, is obviously how much space is being used on the entire iPhone. If you're really struggling for space after you've resynced all the music you want to listen to offline, then you might want to try removing other apps that you don't use, and clearing out photo's and other content that you don't need / want anymore.

[Deech]

Deleting and reinstalling the app did the trick, thanks! Only a little above 1 GB now of space taken up instead of over 5.

[roblun]

I find it strange (must be a bug) that if I un-offline a list, my iPhone does not free up that space!

I hit the roof on my 32 Gb iPhone 4. Well then, I thought, I just have to free up some space by un-offlining a few Spotify lists. Still then, after unchecking Offline mode on all of my lists and multiple rebooting of the phone, the Spotify app still took up 1.8 Gb of space! The only applicable solution was to delete the app, with all of its data, and then reinstall it from App Store.

Would be nice if Spotify could fix this apparent bug in a future update. 

[kemikkel]

This is a known bug and there is an active thread in this forum which has much discussion on the issue. If you have anything to add, please add it there (not here) so you can add your voice to the many others. The more people who complain, the more likely it is that spotify will develeop a fix. Here si the link to read/add further comments on this issue...

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Mobile-iOS-iPhone-iPod-Touch/Clear-Cache-Button-Needed/td-p/2329/hig...

[Madmordigan]

Last night upgraded to Premium and now regretting.  Synced my iPhone and did not realise that it was going to download everything until my phone could take no more! As advised on here, I had to delete Spotify App and start again! Now although I have a slighter smaller playlist my phone still tells me that I need to upgrade to Premium.  I thought that is what I had done!  Spotify is telling me that is what I have done. I have emailed but at this time waiting for advice. This App is certainly not user friendly.

[David]

Madmordigan - Ensure you're using your Facebook details to log in - this should get you logged into your Premium account.