Home / Guides / Troubleshooting / Apple
iPhone & iPad
Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated September 1, 2026
AI educator & workshop leader on local LLM deployment
Download interrupted. Please try again.
Not enough storage. This model requires more free space than is available on this iPhone.| If you see | The cause is | Go to |
|---|---|---|
| The download resets whenever you switch apps or the screen locks | iOS suspended and then terminated the backgrounded app | Fix 1: keep it foregrounded and disable Auto-Lock |
| It refuses to start, citing space, on a phone that looks half empty | iOS reserves headroom and counts the unpacked size too | Fix 3: plan for roughly double the file size |
| You offloaded the app to save space and your models are gone | Models live in the app sandbox and go with the app | Fix 4: never offload an app holding models |
| The download crawls on a fast connection | Low Power Mode, or a hot phone throttling itself | Fix 5: mains power, Wi-Fi, Low Power Mode off |
| A restore from backup came back without the models | iCloud does not back these files up | Fix 6: expect to re-download after a restore |
Three separate problems that arrive together because they share one cause: a multi-gigabyte download is a long-running foreground task on a device designed to suspend long-running tasks and to keep its storage tight.
iOS suspends an app the moment it leaves the foreground, and may terminate it entirely if the system wants the memory — so a download that has not finished is not merely paused, it can be discarded. Models are stored in the app's sandbox container, which means they count against iPhone Storage under that app and are deleted with it; there is no shared model directory as there is on a desktop, and no way to move them elsewhere. And iOS reserves free space for its own operation, refusing new downloads before the device is genuinely full, so the arithmetic is not simply file size against free space. None of these is a bug. They are consequences of the platform, and each has a straightforward accommodation.
For the duration of a multi-gigabyte download, treat it as a foreground job. Set Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never, leave the app open on screen, and plug the phone in — the download is long enough to matter to the battery and mains power also lifts the throttling in fix 5. Set Auto-Lock back to its normal value afterwards; leaving a phone permanently unlocking is a real security cost for a one-off convenience.
⚠️ Auto-Lock set to Never means the phone stays unlocked whenever the screen is on. Change it back once the download completes.
This is the expectation to set before you begin: a failed model download in most of these apps means starting again, not resuming. That changes the calculus for where and when you start one — on cellular it can mean several gigabytes of data spent twice, and on a metered or roaming connection that is expensive. Start large downloads on Wi-Fi, with the phone plugged in, when you can leave it alone for ten minutes.
The rule that avoids most of these failures: budget about twice the model's file size during installation, because the download and the unpacked model can coexist, and iOS wants free headroom on top. Concretely, on a 128 GB iPhone with roughly 100 GB free after the system, photos and apps: A ~1B model at Q4_K_M is about 0.6 GB of weights, so budget ~1.2 GB. Trivial. A ~3B model is about 1.8 GB, so budget ~3.6 GB. Comfortable. A ~8B model is about 4.8 GB, so budget ~9.6 GB. Fine on a 128 GB phone with room; tight on one that is mostly photos. A ~14B model (iPad Pro territory) is about 8.5 GB, so budget ~17 GB. Those are weights only, computed the same way our VRAM calculator computes them, so the figures here and there agree. A specific app's build may differ slightly — its own quantisation and any bundled projector or tokeniser files ride on top. Two 8B models plus a 3B is around 11 GB resident — noticeable but not painful. Four large models is where a 128 GB phone starts making you choose.
Settings → General → iPhone Storage → Offload App removes the application while keeping its documents and data, and it is genuinely useful for most apps. Here it is a trap: models live in the sandbox container that goes with the app, so offloading deletes every gigabyte you downloaded and leaves you re-downloading all of it. When iOS suggests offloading your largest apps to save space, this will be top of the list — that is precisely the one to decline. Deleting a model you no longer use from inside the app is the controlled way to reclaim space.
⚠️ Offloading or deleting the app removes every downloaded model with it, and they are multi-gigabyte re-downloads. Delete individual models from within the app instead.
Three things throttle a large download and they compound. Wi-Fi, not cellular — for a 4 GB pull this is about reliability as much as data. Low Power Mode off, since it throttles both networking and inference by design and is easy to leave on after a low-battery day. And heat: a phone that gets hot slows itself down and, at the extreme, stops entirely until it cools. Downloading with the phone in a case, in the sun, or on a wireless charger makes all three worse at once.
iCloud does not back these models up. They are large, regenerable files and the app marks them accordingly, so a restore to a new phone brings the app and its settings and none of its models. Plan on re-downloading after a device migration, on Wi-Fi, before you need the app. Worth knowing about the Mac side too: on recent macOS some apps can relocate their model store to an external drive, and iOS cannot — there is no equivalent, and no amount of external storage changes that.
If the model downloads successfully and then crashes the app on load, the problem is memory rather than storage and the crash page covers which sizes each device can actually hold. If you are still setting up, the phone guide covers app and model selection.
Include this when you report it
Because iOS suspends a backgrounded app and may terminate it to reclaim memory, and most of these apps cannot resume afterwards. Keep the app in the foreground, set Auto-Lock to Never for the duration, and plug the phone in.
Budget roughly twice the file size during installation, because the download and the unpacked model can coexist and iOS reserves headroom. A 4-bit 8B model is around 4.5 GB on disk, so plan for about 9 GB free before you start.
Only by downloading them again. Models live in the app's sandbox container, which is removed with the app, so Offload App deletes them despite keeping settings. To reclaim space safely, delete individual models from inside the app instead.
No. They are large regenerable files and are excluded from backup, so a restore to a new device brings the app and its settings but none of its models. Re-download on Wi-Fi after a migration, before you need them.
Not on iOS. Recent macOS lets some apps relocate their model store to an external drive; there is no iOS equivalent, and models must live in the app's sandbox on internal storage. Choosing smaller models is the only lever you have.