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up vote 15 down vote favorite
4

After upgrading my iPhone, there is about 10 gigabytes assigned to Other that I don't remember seeing before.

iPhone capacity after upgrade

What could be causing this space to be filled?

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1  
I've run into the same thing and finally reset and reinstalled my iPhone to get rid of "Others". – patrix♦ Oct 13 '11 at 13:37
If you have a second question about your music not playing, you should post that as a separate post. – Daniel Lawson♦ Oct 26 '11 at 0:29
The reset of the iPhone resolved the space and the music not playing issue – Aragorn Oct 26 '11 at 1:03

12 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

It may be leftover data from a failed upgrade/sync. I noticed the same thing on my iPad, which then disappeared once I re-synced it.

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Simply resyncing does nothing on my iPad. The yellow "other" category still takes up 29GB of my 64DB iPad. – EFC Mar 24 '12 at 15:20
You may want to try a backup and then factory restore. Also, check if there are any apps that store (large amounts of) data locally that could be taking it up. – Josh Newman Mar 26 '12 at 1:20
I just got a new iPad and when doing the restore for that found the "other" went away. But within a week it was back again, big as ever. App data is stored with the apps in iOS, so it should not be showing as "other." Still mystified. – EFC Mar 27 '12 at 4:04
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Perhaps try an app like iExplorer (macroplant.com/iexplorer) or PhoneView (ecamm.com/mac/phoneview) to see if you can easily browse the file system of your iPad to determine what is taking up the space: – Josh Newman Mar 27 '12 at 15:15
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Just had a long conversation with Apple support today, they are also mostly uncertain. From my PhoneView explorations it appears that the "other" refers to files that are part of the OS, not part of individual apps (which store files in their own folders and are listed as "apps" in iTunes). But PhoneView cannot show the OS level files on a non-jailbroken device. Why the OS is bloating "other" is a mystery. – EFC Mar 28 '12 at 0:10
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up vote 4 down vote

My ex-wife's other space was 6 GB, and she couldn't hardly do anything. It became apparent that her gmail account was the culprit - lots of big media files.

I reclaimed space in her gmail account by running it through findbigmail.com. It's a web app that places all the big gmail files in three folders varying by size. This takes them away from the inbox and frees up the space that the iPhone uses for gmail.

Findbigmail.com is a wonderful service, and I recommend them whole-heartedly. They removed the big attachements in her email in a few minutes. They say on their site they don't read the emails at all or scan them, so I felt safer.

It was then solved by erasing the iPhone after a backup. To be clear, you must specify the erase all content-and-settings to remove all the bloat.

Then a quick restore brought up a fresh iPhone with 6 GB more of space, and she's happier!

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up vote 3 down vote

Here's what worked for me: I used PhoneView on my mac (not sure if there's an equivalent app for Windows) to archive and delete:

  • Old (text) messages. All those videos take up a lot of space
  • Old Voicemails

I deleted all of my voice recordings on the iPhone, then went into iTunes on my computer where they were saved, and went through and deleted all of the duplicates (2-5 duplicates per recording!)

Nothing else worked for me, including doing a restore. I went from >5GB of "other" stuff to 1.2 GB (Mostly voice memos)

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up vote 3 down vote

I installed the iExplorer, then went to iTunes_Controls Music folder and cleaned it all including subfolders. My "other" went from 2.9 GB to ZERO... before that I tried to clean Safari cache, clean trash folders in my emails, etc, and nothing worked.

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up vote 3 down vote

I had 6 GB of "other" and couldn't rid myself of it. I finally realized that I send pictures all the time via text message. I deleted my texts, and the "other" disappeared!!!

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up vote 2 down vote

If it's jailbroken then Cydia and other JB AppStore apps may use it.

Say for instance you have downloaded some App using Cydia and installed it. The installation-file (*.ipsw) stays in the filesystem. until you remove it.

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up vote 2 down vote

I found that having the camera application in memory kept it from releasing the space when I deleted the videos and pictures after uploading them to iPhoto. Quit all my apps and the Other shrunk from 7G to 0.7G

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up vote 1 down vote

I had the same problem and after multiple syncs, it still wouldn't resolve. I turned off all of my mail (I had my .mac and google email addresses on the phone) and synced again. That resolved the issue.

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Why would mail take up so much space? – iglvzx Oct 26 '11 at 0:15
My gmail account takes up ~3GB. That doesn't explain 10GB, but it's a start. – Daniel Lawson♦ Oct 26 '11 at 0:30
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You usually do not sync/download your entire mail account though. How is your mail account setup on your iDevice? – iglvzx Oct 26 '11 at 0:58
Good point about not all mail messages being stored locally on an iPhone. – Daniel Lawson♦ Nov 9 '11 at 4:52
up vote 1 down vote

I've seen this a few times, and something different seems to be the cause each time. You can fix it by syncing with iTunes, then disabling different types of data to be synced, syncing again, and checking to see if "other" goes down. If not, enable that data again and move on to the next.

For me, it was music, but I've seen books and podcasts and I think calendars do the same thing.

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up vote 1 down vote

For me, backup & restore fixed the issue. Had lost 13 GB, which went down to 1 GB after restore.

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up vote 1 down vote

Whenever I deleted my music from my iphone, it also cleared out a huge chunk of what was labeled as "other". My usage went from 6.9 gigs to 2.9 gigs. Still a lot for just "other"...but for whatever reason my music was only showing up as 1.6 gigs in iTunes, but when I looked under usage in the iphone settings...it said it was 5.6 gigs. I have no idea what the deal is...but at least I got my "other" down to a smaller size.

Apple needs to get this fixed...

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I had 9.8 gigs of "other" None of the "unclick" certain items and sync methods worked, and I had to restore. I was able to restore from my back up, so it was not too much trouble. My other is now .53 (yes "point") gigs. Note sure if this matters, but I clicked off syncing music before doing the last back-up before restoring. – user14085 Nov 24 '11 at 4:17
up vote -2 down vote

Go to Settings > Safari and clear history, cookies, and data.

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1  
Is this just a wild guess or a proven solution to the problem mentioned in the question? – patrix♦ May 31 '12 at 20:23

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