iOS 12.5.5, to answer the question posed by the icon

[azurelunatic]

(as sent to Apple)

Bug report:

I re-awakened my dormant iPad after losing track of my iPod. A few podcast subscriptions that I had made on my iPod were present and began downloading. A few days later, I went to listen to a podcast and found that the podcast app was missing and my storage was completely full. The podcast app had downloaded all of the Sleep With Me archives that would fit, and deleted several apps to make more room. Including, apparently, the podcast app itself. I am aware of how to limit downloads on any given podcast. I have previously had a different version of this problem with the Google Photos app, which will download images until there is no room for podcasts. I would like to be able to set a storage cap on any given app so a single app cannot go wild.

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Feature request:

A number of apps have the potential to download a large amount of data. Some of these apps have the ability to restrict those downloads within the app. Other apps have no apparent way to prohibit them from taking up all the free space on the device. (I am thinking of several incidents with Google Photos.) I would like to be able to go into Settings and make sure that any given app stays within a storage limit that I assign to it, and if it wants to exceed that limit, it should tell me so and I may choose to grant it more space.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

what I want to know is why any app (that isn't specifically a storage manager to which the user has specifically granted permission to fiddle with other apps) has the ability to delete apps in the first place

[azurelunatic]

I think it was the "smart" storage manager in iOS, alas

[kore]

A few days later, I went to listen to a podcast and found that the podcast app was missing and my storage was completely full. The podcast app had downloaded all of the Sleep With Me archives that would fit, and deleted several apps to make more room. Including, apparently, the podcast app itself.

O M G DD:

[batrachian]

This is definitely the point where i have the stunned fish reactions. like. wow. Shure Fine Coding, that.

[vass]

Wowwwwww.

Is that the native podcast app, or a third party one?

[azurelunatic]

Native podcast app. Apple's very own.

I think that at least it was the iOS storage management thing that deleted the app (along with several others) to make space, BUT.

[silveradept]

That is certainly a decision being made, with neither oversight nor user input, so it can't possibly be as smart as the company claims it is.