My current iPhone backup includes over 100GB from Arc Timeline 4 and about 50 GB from Arc Timeline.
While parallel according to backup of the apps only include about 2.x GB.
Do you have idea what causes the large amount of the iPhone backup and is it possible to reduce them?
Hi cnernst,
Thanks for the screenshot and the clear question.
What that screen shows is iOS’s own estimate of how much each app contributes to your device backup — which is a separate figure from how much data Arc actually keeps on your phone. The two often don’t match, and iOS’s per-app size numbers are unreliable in general.
For context: a typical Arc database lands somewhere in the 4–8 GB range, even after years of recording. So 107 GB for Arc Timeline 4 (plus 61 GB for the old app) is wildly outside anything we’d expect — unusual enough that we’d like to understand exactly what’s happening before drawing any conclusions.
Two things would help a lot:
Arc’s own storage breakdown. In Arc Timeline 4: Settings (the gear at the top-left of the map) → Storage. That page shows exactly what Arc keeps on your device — database, caches, logs, exports — and the total it actually controls. A screenshot of it is the single most useful thing you can send.
Your app version. Settings → scroll down to Debug Info (under “Advanced”) → it’s on the top line.
With those, we’ll have a much clearer picture of whether there’s real data behind the figure or whether iOS’s backup view is over-counting.
Here are the requested screenshots:
Is it a good idea to have install both apps the old Arc Time and new Arc Timeline 4 side by side?
In the past I saw several times the message “database needed to be converted”, after app stopped working. Might this cause some issues?
The problem is according to iCloud backup limit of 200GB I run into the limit with the current backup, where according to iPhone these to apps exceed it.
Hi cnernst,
Thanks for the Storage screenshot and the version — that’s exactly what we needed.
The reassuring part first: your actual Arc data is small. Your Storage screen shows Arc Timeline 4 using 3.44 GB on your iPhone (almost all of it the 3.42 GB database), which is completely normal — even on the low side for years of recording. So the ~107 GB that iOS’s backup screen attributes to Arc is not a real measure of your data.
That backup view is genuinely unreliable. In our own testing, the per-app figures there change substantially between backup runs for the same app, and they double-count data shared between apps — so they overstate things considerably. The clearest sign is in your own numbers: iOS lists 107 GB for Arc Timeline 4 plus 61 GB for Arc Timeline, which is 168 GB of “Arc” inside a 153 GB total backup — not possible. We can’t fully account for the figure you’re seeing yet, but we’d caution strongly against reading it as a literal measure of your data.
On your other questions:
The “database needed to be converted” messages are nothing to be concerned about — that’s a normal part of the app updating its database format when we ship changes, and it has no bearing on storage size.
Having both apps installed side by side is completely fine. Arc Timeline 4, the old Arc Timeline, and Arc Recorder can all be installed and running without interfering with each other. Whether you keep the old ones around is entirely up to you and how settled you feel on Arc Timeline 4.
If you do want to reclaim some space, deleting the old Arc Timeline will clear the logs and temporary files it builds up over time — one concrete thing worth trying. (Arc Recorder is just a companion recorder for the old app, so if you remove Arc Timeline you can remove Arc Recorder along with it — it serves no purpose on its own.) Only do that once you’re confident Arc Timeline 4 has everything you want from them. There’s no rush, and no harm in leaving them in place until you’re ready.
Hope that helps.
Can I backup my data and delete the apps to verify that iCloud backup is wrong?
My problem is that according to iCloud backup I am exactly 135GB over limit after moving from my old phone to the new iPhone.
So without the 160GB of the ArcTimelime app I am under the 200GB iCloud limit and I would pay less per month.
Is there a backup of my timeline possible, so I can check it?
Yes, you can verify it — and there’s a safe order to do it in.
First, before anything else: turn on Arc Timeline 4’s own backups — Settings (gear, top left of the map) → Backup & Restore — and give them time to complete. These go to Arc’s own iCloud Drive folder, completely separate from the iPhone backup, and they’re what makes any of the following safe. (They’ll take up some iCloud space themselves — typically under a gigabyte — a small temporary irony given what you’re trying to solve, but this backup is what protects your timeline data.)
The reversible test: in the iCloud settings, under your device’s backup, there’s a per-app list where you can toggle apps out of the iPhone backup. You can exclude the Arc apps there — they keep working normally on the phone, and the next backup recalculates without them, showing you the real effect on your backup size. Arc Timeline 4’s data stays protected by its own backup system regardless. To be honest about expectations: we can’t predict how much space this frees. The backup screen’s per-app figures are unreliable, so it likely won’t be anywhere near the 160 GB shown. Arc Timeline 4 we can already rule out — your Storage screenshot showed its real footprint is 3.4 GB. For the old app we can’t fully rule out some genuine accumulation, so the test will tell you the truth either way.
The full delete test, if you want the definitive version: this only fully works if you delete all the Arc apps together (Arc Timeline 4, the old Arc Timeline, and Arc Recorder) — they share some storage that iOS only releases when every one of them is gone. Two important things before going that route: (1) make sure Arc Timeline 4’s backup has completed first, since reinstalling it means restoring from that backup, which takes a good half hour or more; and (2) treat deleting the old Arc Timeline as permanent — its own backup and restore process is much slower and less reliable, so realistically it wouldn’t be coming back with its data. Only Arc Timeline 4 would return. If you’re settled on Arc Timeline 4, that’s fine — but it’s a one-way door for the old app.
And one more place worth checking, which may matter more than any of this: you mentioned the problem appeared after moving to a new iPhone. Have a look in the iCloud storage management screen under Backups for whether your old iPhone’s backup is still stored there. After a phone migration both backups often remain, and the old one can be very large — if it’s there and your new phone has everything you need, deleting the old device’s backup is often the single biggest space recovery available.
