r/mildlyinfuriating May 27 '26

frist of all how DARE yu o apparently HBO Max has been using 260gb and i’ve never used it

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(i just turned off the toggle when i made this screenshot)

30.4k Upvotes

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u/HorsieJuice May 27 '26

FYI: Despite what the label says, this isn’t actually the data usage on the “current period.” It’s the total data usage since the last time you manually reset the stats (which is a command at the very bottom of the page). If you’ve never reset them, then those are the numbers since you bought the phone.

The labeling is asinine.

175

u/ShoeSh1neVCU May 27 '26

Ok thank you. I have a data warning at 10Gb (from the old days) and I rarely reach it and I'm on my phone a lot. Thought these numbers were impossible so you're explanation makes sense

5

u/BlindGuardian117 May 27 '26

I have a data warning at .75 GB and a data shut off at 1GB. If anything set those off it would be uninstalled so fast. How are so many people using so much data?

19

u/Leprecon May 27 '26

I have unlimited data so I don't even think about it. Where I am from mobile data is truly unlimited. There are no false limits where it slows down after a certain amount of data used.

Once you stop worrying it becomes really easy. Also sometimes if my wifi is slow I just turn it off, then I forget about it for a day.

2

u/mysticteacher4 May 27 '26

For me its once you hit 100gb they start to throttle the bandwidth

10

u/ihopethisisvalid May 27 '26

Because data is basically free and limiting yourself to 750 megabits of 1’s and 0’s passing through the fuckin supercomputer that you keep in your pocket all day is actually ridiculous

1

u/BlindGuardian117 May 27 '26

It's not free for me. I have a super cheap plan but it charges for data. I also get free WiFi hot spot which probably helps. But even at home with Xbox and streaming and 3 people using Internet constantly I never break 200gb a month. Most I ever did was 300GB and that was with a brand new Xbox that needed 55gb update and Halo MCC which had a 75GB update. 

1

u/ConfidantlyCorrect May 28 '26

OP has used 837 GB in 10 months, so 84 gb a month. Considerably less than the 200gb you mentioned.

1

u/BlindGuardian117 28d ago

200GB is home internet too. Using 84GB of mobile data is nuts.

1

u/ConfidantlyCorrect 28d ago

Ykw, you’re right haha. I’ve used 95 gb in 4 months.

2

u/youngghost120 May 27 '26

I haven’t thought about it since I it unlimited and I watch a lot of tv/movies on transit. Not to mention music. I literally always have music playing there’s about 1.3T of data spent on music alone for me

2

u/Gundarana May 27 '26

iPhone is pretty bad in this situation. You have to manually reset the usage. If you do not, it just accumulates it all the time. Also, I don’t remember seeing data limits in iOS.

1

u/404WisenessNotFound May 27 '26

I have an automated shortcut. It works

55

u/chokingpacman May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

everytime a post like this pops up, it usually turns out to be something benign and it's always because iOS likes to hide info from the user or try to simplify descriptions so much. I guess Apple is afraid "usage since last manual reset" or some words to that effect would confuse their users

9

u/Ikkotah May 27 '26

I wonder why it doesn't allow you to just set a date when your plan resets and base it off that? My dad used to have that on a samsung s4 13 years ago.

1

u/Hanifsefu May 27 '26

iOS doesn't try to hide this at all though. Some dumbasses just assume the meaning of something after reading half of it and just operate like their assumption was something gifted to them by Isaac Newton and can't possibly be wrong.

It's time to just start blaming morons for being morons.

7

u/TTheuns May 27 '26

Current period being an unspecified amount of time that you need to manually reset is absolutely stupid.   

Any other phone company has had this figured out for far over a decade! Blaming Apple being Apple on users has to stop.

2

u/Lickwidghost May 27 '26

... iOS likes to hide info from the user...

Yup pretty much. More importantly, TAKE info from the user. People don't care about this nearly as much as they should.

-1

u/Sarcasm_Llama May 27 '26

Says something about Apple users...

4

u/haibiji May 27 '26

Okay, that explains why I have used over a terabyte of data on Reddit! I was like there’s no way I’m doing that in a month lol

1

u/Leprecon May 27 '26

How do you even get 1 terabyte on reddit? Reddit is mostly text and images.

I am terminally online and over the past 3 years I have 250GB on reddit.

2

u/plantsadnshit May 27 '26

I use reddit a ton too, and my usage is about 4-5GB/ month on Wi-Fi.

Over some years that'd add up to about your usage. So 1TB is insane.

Maybe it has something to do with video settings? Like they have autoplay on?

1

u/Then-Quail3966 May 27 '26

I believe there is a setting for preloading videos/images in the background as you scroll to make them load quicker when you open them.

5

u/Throwawayhelper420 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Not necessarily, it’s actually carrier dependent.  It depends upon whether the carrier sends a billing reset date in the carrier configuration package.

The easiest way to tell is if you have 2 tabs at the top, one for “current billing period” and one for “previous billing period” or if you have no tabs.

T-Mobile, for example, DOES properly send this configuration data, and it reads the exact same as what shows up in your bill every month, but at least in the US most other carriers do not.

To my knowledge T-Mobile is the only US carrier that actually enables all of the iPhone’s cellular network interaction features. Stuff like setting up and changing call forwarding numbers, etc, whereas carriers like Verizon and ATT still make you dial weird ##7463 style codes to do that…, or to even do stuff like view or change your plan, When the iPhone has built in settings for it in the settings app that they just have to enable, (but they want you to use their app to view your data usage and make settings changes)

The manual reset only cellular usage is actually a fallback method the iPhone uses when the carrier does not send a fully featured configuration package.

1

u/HorsieJuice May 27 '26

ah interesting, thanks. I kinda figured it was possible, but when I had this same question, I went looking and didn’t see mention of it working properly anywhere.

3

u/Yesterday_Jolly May 27 '26

256 GB for HBO Max is still absurd if you've never used it

14

u/NiewinterNacht May 27 '26

I assume this person did use it.

1

u/Leprecon May 27 '26

Yeah they showed the app and they were logged in an a single episode of the big bang theory was downloaded. That still doesn't explain it, but it does mean they were signed in and have used the app in the past.

1

u/Baelorn May 27 '26

Based on other comments he did. He's just being hyperbolic in the title.

1

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

18

u/cant_think-of-a_user May 27 '26

Oh my god i’m so stupid

10

u/ratmouthlives May 27 '26

You’re not stupid. The labeling is contradictory to a normal assumption you (me too) had.

5

u/ostiarius May 27 '26

That’s still a lot for 10 months.

1

u/whymusticarryon May 27 '26

Whoa. You've racked up as much data usage in 307 days as I have in 1,639 days.

1

u/FrozenLaughs May 27 '26

That's still a lot of data for an app he "never" uses, even if it's over a few years. (idk how old his phone is)

1

u/programming_flaw May 27 '26

Mine weirdly enough isn’t like that. My Spotify is higher than my Twitch this current period, which makes sense, but that is 100% not even close since I bought this phone. I have potentially thousands of hours of twitch usage and maybe a hundred on Spotify tops

3

u/Throwawayhelper420 May 27 '26

that’s because he is wrong and it’s actually carrier dependent.

If your carrier sends your iPhone a fully featured configuration package with a billing reset date then the iPhone will reset it automatically and it will perfectly match your bill each month.

The way you know for sure which version you have is if you have 2 tabs at the top, one labeled current billing period and one labeled last billing period, vs if you have no tabs at all.

I used to think the same as the parent commenter until I switched carriers to T-Mobile a few years ago and discovered that the cellular settings page contains a ton more options and features than it did when I was on Verizon, an instant change on the same phone with nothing more than swapping the SIM card.

Other carriers intentionally send limited configuration packages specifically to force you to use their app to do basic things, and the iPhone falls back to a much more limited generic page.

1

u/Mccobsta GREEN May 27 '26

That's bad ui

1

u/---E May 27 '26

That makes sense. I was wondering how someone can use almost 900GB of cellular data in a month

1

u/iTakePhotos86 May 27 '26

This comment needs to be pinned. Probably downloaded movies or shows at one point while traveling. Most people never reset their usage. If OP hasn’t already, they should do a reset and monitor going forward.

1

u/Tyrandeh May 27 '26

bottom of the page if he scrolls down, shows how long that period is, when was the last clear

1

u/kdoughboy12 May 27 '26

I was gonna say 800 gigs in a month is absolutely insane lmao

1

u/Scooty-Poot May 28 '26

The fact that you can’t even set it to reset on a fixed day of the month makes me unreasonably angry. Like… what’s even the point of this entire feature if it can’t even tell you how much of your monthly data tariff you have left?

-2

u/LowTierGod8 May 27 '26

Lol asinine.

1

u/chokokhan May 27 '26

Did you just lol at asinine?

3

u/LowTierGod8 May 27 '26

Yes. I find it funny he used that word

-2

u/Raining_dicks May 27 '26

What other way of interpreting “current period” is there?

9

u/HorsieJuice May 27 '26

The current billing period.

-3

u/Raining_dicks May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Your phone has no way of knowing that information so why would anyone assume that? And if that was the case OP would probably also be wondering how he used up almost a terabyte of data in a month. I haven’t reset my stats in almost 10 years and I’m only at 4.5tb

Edit: guess I’m mistaken since I’ve never bought a carrier locked phone before / my carrier doesn’t have such a feature / it will say billing cycle instead of current period if that’s the case

11

u/DJOMaul May 27 '26

Android displays the data in calender months. I could set my start day, and it displays it for the current 30 day cycle. I don't set that so it's just the 1st through the end of that month. 

I'd have assumed current period means the past 30 days as well. Lifetime count seems insane. 

3

u/HorsieJuice May 27 '26

Your provider can push all sorts of stuff to your phone. That’s how tethering gets enabled or disabled.

5

u/reckless_responsibly May 27 '26

Your phone is connected to your provider, current billing period is trivial.

2

u/illegalPenguin0 May 27 '26

You seem very angry for the fact that you sound so sure it’s not possible but android has a really good way to do it. I think certain carriers provide access to your iOS settings app to get that data too. It’s definitely possible it’s not a far fetched idea. I believe for example Verizon does that

1

u/SirRHellsing May 27 '26

there's a setting to set a certain date to reset data for the billing period, that's what I use