Is there anything I can do about this extremely vague block of data that’s taking up 30% of my phone’s storage? Mind you, this isn’t the operating system itself, as that’s listed as its own category.
EDIT: I tried (a) backing up to my computer, factory resetting, then restoring from backup and (b) setting the date years in the future. Neither worked, in fact (a) actually increased my system data to 34 GB! What DID end up working was updating my iOS from 18 to 26, which I had to do from my computer via iTunes since my phone was full. Apparently major system updates reset system data
If you’re lucky it will clear it. There were some folks complaining that they couldn’t install a system update because there “wasn’t enough room” according to the update process. This despite caches that could be cleared or apps that could be unloaded.
Indeed; my system data is currently at 17.78GB, I have 21GB free, and the last OS update still required me to offload a bunch of apps to free up enough space to install—despite there ALSO being a 10GB reserve for OS updates.