With the imposing data caps cellular carriers like to put on their users, it’s important to be able to keep track of your data, so you don’t hit expensive data overages each month.
In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the steps to find out how much mobile data your iPhone apps and services are using individually.
View how much data your iPhone apps are using
- Open the Settings app and tap Cellular or Mobile Data.
- Scroll down a bit until you start seeing a list of apps. Underneath the name of each app, you’ll see a number in KB, MB, or GB of usage. This usage is the amount of data these apps have used since being installed on your device or since the last time those statistics were reset by you. For example, my Amazon app has used 70.8 MB of cellular data since I installed the app. This amount doesn’t include data used by the app on Wi-Fi networks.
View how much data iOS services are using
In addition to apps, system services throughout iOS will also consume cellular data. System services include functions like:
- Apple ID Services
- iCloud
- Siri
- User education
- Mapping Services
- Time & Location
- Location services
- Push Notifications
- And much more…
To check to see how much data your system services are using, follow these steps:
- Launch the Settings app and pick Cellular or Mobile Data.
- Find System Services in the list and tap it. Here, you can see what system services have been using your data and just how much since you started using your iPhone or iPad.
Reset cellular data usage statistics
If you want to reset these statistics on a monthly basis to compare them with your carrier’s data readings, you can easily do so from the Cellular preferences pane. However, keep in mind that you must reset these statistics manually, and they cannot be set to reset automatically on a monthly basis.
Here are the steps to reset your data statistics:
- Open the Settings app and tap Cellular or Mobile Data.
- Scroll all the way down and tap Reset Statistics.
Tapping this button will clear all current data records for both your apps and your system services, allowing the counter to start over from scratch.
If you have any interest in making sure your carrier is not over-charging you, this feature can be an effective tool so long as you keep monitoring it and resetting it every time your billing period expires.
Keeping taps on your iPhone or iPad’s data usage is important for the sake of understanding what apps are consuming the most data on your devices. If an app you don’t really need is consuming too much of your data, consider deleting it.
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