Date: 6/24/26 12:07 pm From: Kent Fiala (via carolinabirds Mailing List) <carolinabirds...> Subject: Re: Merlin being giant data hog, but "data and documents" files not accessible - advice?
It used to be that Merlin automatically saved every recording. People who didn't realize that thus ended up with massive amounts of recording data on their phone. And if Merlin ever lost track of those files for some reason, then you'd have a situation like Betsy had. Several months ago a change was made so that now Merlin NEVER saves a recording unless you specifically tap the "Save" button after you stop the recording. This has caused some people to lose recordings that they expected to keep, until they caught onto the "Press save" thing, but at least you don't unwittingly have such a buildup of recordings.
The above is definitely true for Android. It seems like I've heard contradictory statements about whether iPhone is the same.
Kent Fiala
On 6/24/2026 1:14 PM, Betsy Kane (via carolinabirds Mailing List) wrote: > Thanks to everyone who responded to my question. If anyone is > wondering, I uninstalled Merlin and re-installed it. That freed up a > massive amount of storage. It was the consensus response too. > > One of the many helpful people who responded wrote "Deleting packs and > old recordings should clear them entirely but I think there’s a bug > where sometimes it only removes it from the user interface but doesn’t > clear the data from the app itself, so a hard restart is needed." > That seems like it happened with my app. It's been years since I've > been able to retrieve a recording once made. I can only replay them if > I am still actively using the session when the recording was made (or > if I think to save them as an audio file outside of Merlin which can > be done but which I rarely do). After that, they become unavailable > and don't load when I go to My Sound Recordings. Apparently they may > have been still in there, just unseen, and there must have been > hundreds, all using storage. > > Anyway, issue resolved - Happy birding > Betsy Kane > Washington, N.C. > > On Mon, Jun 22, 2026 at 10:09 PM Betsy Kane <oldurbanist...> wrote: > > Merlin is soaking up 200G of storage on my phone, of which most is > "data and documents". Only a very small fraction is the app > itself, per my phone's memory usage data. > > I go into Merlin to see my data and documents. Click on Sound > Recordings -- nothing comes up. (This isn't new -- I haven't been > able to access any sound recordings in Merlin in years) > > I would like to delete my "data and documents" for Merlin since I > can't access them anyway and really need the 200G of storage for > other things, like the operating system. > > This is on an iPhone. > > (I don't think it's a bunch of bird packs because I have already > offloaded the ones I'm not using. Only the Southeast pack shows > anyway) > > Appreciate any advice on how to shed 200 Gigs. > > Betsy Kane > Washington, N.C. >
