TwisterDC

Q: Why is my "other" space on my iPhone 5 / iOS 7 so large and always growing?

I have seen this question posted a lot but I don't believe I've ever seen Apple post a definitive response.  If there is one official definitive response on how to keep this from happening and I missed it sorry. 

 

I have the same problem it seems many are having.  I have an iPhone 5 with 16 GB running iOS 7.0.4.  As soon as I upgraded to iOS 7, I started seeing a lot of my space being taken up by "other".  It was up to about 4-5 GB as I recall, which is ridiculous especially for a phone advertised with 16 GB. 

 

The only remedy I could find that did anything was to restore my phone from scratch, which is a pain in the -ss, but I did it anyway.  Initially that seemed to work and I was in the hundreds of MB of "other" for a while. 

 

Today, about 2 weeks later, I went sync and to my amazement it was up again to 2 GB of "other".  I synced it and then it grew to 2.52 GB.  ***? 

 

I am on iTunes 11.1.3 on Mac if that makes any difference.

 

Is there a definitive fix or something different I can do for this recurrning problem?  Obviously I cannot keep restoring my iPhone once ever week or two to recapture disk space.  I hardly use my phone for the apps (use my iPad for most of that) so it's not like I am doing a bunch of complicated apps with large data sets.

 

Update: I synced it again and now it went up to 2.53 GB. 

 

Is there a fix for this?  It is getting old having to delete all my music to make room for all this.

iPhone 5, iOS 7.0.4, Recurring problem for iOS 7.0.x

Posted on Nov 25, 2013 10:46 AM

Close

Q: Why is my "other" space on my iPhone 5 / iOS 7 so large and always growing?

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 8 of 9 last Next
  • by NovNet,

    NovNet NovNet Nov 28, 2014 3:13 PM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 28, 2014 3:13 PM in response to TwisterDC

    Greetings fellow "Other" sufferers.  I don't know exactly what causes this problem - perhaps a corrupt file - but I managed to fix it on my iPhone 5 (IOS 8.x).  I purchased a product named "DiskAid" about two years ago, which allows me to look at all the files on my iPhone.  I eventually took a look at the "File System" folder, and I was checking various subfolders in "File System" when I noticed one named "iTunes_control" which, curiously enough, was very close to the size of my "Other" stat from iTunes.  I thought this odd also, because I had synced several times without loading any music, during my troubleshooting. I deleted "iTunes_control", re-synched, and voila !!! - the ugly orange "Other" bar completely disappeared - I mean COMPLETELY disappeared.  Of course, make sure you backup first if you thy this and "No", I have no financial interest in DiskAid whatsoever, although I recommend it.  I think the latest version is called something else though.

     

    I can also say that almost daily I have become disillusioned with Apple, particularly with the user interfaces in the latest OS/IOS versions.  I get the feeling that Apple is no longer listening to it's customers.  What a shame.

     

    Anyway, I hope this helps - and I hope I'm not duplicating someone else's findings.

  • by NovNet,

    NovNet NovNet Nov 28, 2014 3:50 PM in response to NovNet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 28, 2014 3:50 PM in response to NovNet

    Sorry about this - I could't delete my own article or edit it, so I did it over with a bit more detail.

     

    Greetings fellow "Other" sufferers.  I don't know exactly what causes this problem - perhaps a corrupt file - but I managed to fix it on my iPhone 5 (IOS 8.x).  I purchased a product named "DiskAid" about two years ago, which allows me to look at all the files on my iPhone.  I eventually drilled to the "File System" folder, and I was checking various subfolders in "File System" when I noticed one named "iTunes_Control" which, curiously enough, was very close to the size of my "Other" stat via iTunes.  I thought this odd also, because I had synced several times without loading any music during my troubleshooting. So, I deleted "iTunes_control", re-synched, and voila !!! - the ugly orange "Other" bar completely disappeared - I mean COMPLETELY disappeared.  Of course, I did backup before I tried this, although I figured I might have to reinstall the IOS -- and "No", I have no financial interest in iskAid whatsoever, although I recommend it.  I think the latest version is called something else though.  This also is a good time to do another backup so as not to reintroduce the problem - although I don't think it will since, if I understand correctly, only user data is actually backed up - but I don't know whether or not the IOS considers this user data.  The folder itself looked like it had a huge chunk of my iTunes library in it before I deleted it.

     

    Let me also add a little commentary:  First, the re-synch did recreate the "iTunes_Control" folder.  Next, please let's not yet assume that this folder (or content) is necessarily the problem, it may be that the technique is the important thing - look for a large folder/file roughly the size of your "Other" area.  It helps considerably if it doesn't make sense - i.e. why were all these iTunes files laying around when I had turned off syncing music.  Exercise care, if the problem is caused by a corrupt file or index link, it may have occurred anywhere and not necessarily in a location that is this easily addressed or removed.

     

    Anyway, I hope this helps - and I hope I'm not duplicating someone else's findings.  I'll be anxious to check back to see if anyone else has benefited from this.  It would be great if it were exclusive to the iTunes_control" folder - maybe Apple will fix it if we make it easy for them.

     

    I can also say that almost daily I have become disillusioned with Apple, particularly with the user interfaces in the latest OS/IOS versions.  I get the feeling that Apple is no longer listening to it's customers.  What a shame.

     

    Regards..

  • by MarkMatters,

    MarkMatters MarkMatters Dec 21, 2014 2:28 PM in response to ishrocker
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 21, 2014 2:28 PM in response to ishrocker

    I suffered the same "other" problem. Ishrocker's suggestion worked beautifully  and reduced my "other" section from 3.51 (and growing) to 614 mb. The trick here is that you must do a complete restore of the phone, not the easier backup and restore.

  • by shinseikatsu,

    shinseikatsu shinseikatsu Dec 22, 2014 12:03 AM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 22, 2014 12:03 AM in response to TwisterDC

    In my experiences, the large "Other" space has been mainly iOS updates that the phone automatically downloaded. These started getting particularly large after iOS8 (and patches) were released.

     

    There is a way to remove the already downloaded (but not yet installed) updater files, to free up the space. But your iPhone will merrily re-download them the next time it's connected to a power source -- and Apple does not provide a way to turn off the auto-downloading of OTA updates.

     

    To stop my phone from re-downloading the massive updates after I just deleted them, I had to set my router to block my iphone from contacting Apple's iOS update servers. When I want to do the update, I can still easily tell iTunes to download the update just fine. A few internet searches should help you find the information of how to do this.

  • by dxing97,Helpful

    dxing97 dxing97 Dec 31, 2014 3:53 PM in response to shinseikatsu
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 31, 2014 3:53 PM in response to shinseikatsu

    I just figured out where the "Other" space on my iPhone 6+ came from.


    For me, it became a problem after I restarted my mac while iTunes was syncing. It was fine before this. No syncing issues, or overly large "Other" category. When I tried to sync my iPhone after that, iTunes wouldn't recognize it and I had to do a restore, even though everything looked fine on the iPhone. Three restores and a iTunes restart later, I got it working, with all ~30 gigs of music and loaded. Now, though, the "Other" category ballooned to 24 GB, much larger than the couple GB it was before.


    Since I have ~110 GB of space to work with, and with 46 GB still free this isn't a killer issue but I don't want it to be an issue later, so I looked for a solution, leading me to this thread.


    The only difference I could find between my "Other" and others here is that mine doesn't increase with each sync. It stays constant at 24.03 GB.

     

    Someone suggested iTools and deleting the music folder in iTunes_Control. I downloaded and looked at it, but since I couldn't check how big the music folder was from within iTools, I decided to try other apps to see exactly how big this folder was before I tried deleting it.

     

    Before I go into that, this is a quick breakdown of the iPhone's storage usage from iTunes:

     

    Music:                    31.79 GB

    Video:                    2.55 GB

    Photos:                  4.61 GB

    Apps and Docs:     7.76 GB

    Other:                    24.03 GB

     

    I tried using iFunBox to check how large the music folder was, but had same problem: couldn't tell how large it was.

     

    Next, I tried a free trial of iMazing. I couldn't tell how large the folders were directly, but I could use "Get Info" to check. I checked the music folder in iTunes_Control, and it had 59.9 GB in it!

     

    It turns out to be about about 5 GB larger than Music and Other added together. Since the music folder was made up of 50 folders labeled from F00 to F49, each one about 1.1 GB in size and filled with music tracks AFAICT, and some of them were probably corrupted, as someone suggested here, I went ahead and deleted it through iMazing after making a backup and exiting out of iTunes.

     

    I reopened iTunes, and the "Other" category vanished. As in gone. Poof. I expected iTunes to start syncing the music library back, but for some reason the music still showed up, this time as 31.72 GB. Going into the iPhone, however, I found I couldn't play any music. I tried syncing it again, and it started syncing music on again! It's still syncing now, but right now I'm more happy that the yellow bar of grief is gone.

     

    I'll post an update later when it's done syncing.

  • by Gatsbysdad,

    Gatsbysdad Gatsbysdad Jan 2, 2015 5:10 AM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 2, 2015 5:10 AM in response to TwisterDC

    I have experienced this problem with several iPhones over the years. None of the solutions in this post permanently worked for me and the reset is extreme. Which I did do too many times. None explain the (theoretical) cause. Unfortunately Apple does not appear to be active in these communities. Here's what I learned.

     

    iFunbox does seem to work without any malware effect so far. Norton appears to think it's safe as well. http://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=ifunbox.com

    I have a 128GB iPhone 6 plus so a restore/reset is a big deal. It can take several hours to reset everything.

     

    It appears in my case this problem is caused by failed or incomplete syncs. I have about 150 apps, 13K songs selected to sync etc. So it takes several hours to finish. I noticed while I selected about 13K songs the number of songs on the phone would vary and not match my iTunes selected quantity. Sometimes iTunes  sync appeared to complete okay on other times iTunes would display waiting to sync otherwise it appeared to complete successfully. My phone would appear to be stuck in sync mode (small circulating arrow on phone). Any reboot of Mac or phone would kill what appeared hung but then the large other space problem would occur. So this is what worked for me.

     

    I think the other space is songs being processed and the space is freed up as it is processed or when completed. I suspect screen savers and/or auto lock on iPhone may cause a problem on either the phone or mac.

     

    1) Disabled computer sleep. System Preferences/Energy Saver set to never.

    2) Disabled iPhone auto lock. Settings/General/Auto Lock set to never.

    3) Clear other space using iFunbox see DJEclipselive post on Jul 26, 2014 3:45 PM in this post. Included here for convenience.

        Step 1: download and install ifunbox on Mac or PC (it is free)

        Step 2: click under Raw File System

        Step 3: click on itunes_control (only iTunes_ might appear if the screen is not full)

        Step 4: click the music folder

        Step 5: Delete all the folders inside, each folder contains music.

        Step 6: Disconnect your iPhone and reconnect to iTunes

    4) Sync iTunes

    5) When sync completes eject phone.

    6) Phone may still appear to be syncing (small circulating arrow on phone). This is where things can go wrong. It may appear the process is hung but it is processing I assume the other data. On iPhone look at Settings/General/About the number of songs will likely flash a number then display processing. If you go back to general and touch about again the flashed number should be increasing. If you wait until this is completed you should then have all your songs and a reasonable/small other space. In my case the entire process took about 2 hours. I think the key is to let everything finish and I suspect auto-lock may cause the background process to abort. (Apple could shed some light on this.)

     

    You can then reenable both computer sleep and iPhone auto lock.

  • by TwisterDC,Solvedanswer

    TwisterDC TwisterDC Jan 2, 2015 4:33 PM in response to dxing97
    Level 1 (7 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 2, 2015 4:33 PM in response to dxing97

    I think that at this point we have identified that this is clearly an Apple bug (that they for some reason won't fix), and what the short-term solution is.

     

    As suggested by others and recently dxing97, iTunes is saving a large amount of corrupted data in the iTunes_control directory.  I also downloaded the trrial of iMazing and used it to delete all the media directories as described. It works as described.  Unfortunately after 15 days you have to pay for it in order to address the Apple bug.  So make sure you add this to the cost of doing business with Apple next time your contract is up and you consider other competing options.  Buy a bigger phone for an extra $100 or buy this utility for an extra $30 to get around the Apple bug.

     

    What I found was that it reduced my "Other" space down from about 3-4 GB to about 400 MB, which persisted for several days.  But as soon as I connected to iTunes again and sync'd, iTunes, dumped about 4GB worth of $hit into my "Other" space again.  After I ran iMazing again it reduced it down to <1GB again.

     

    Obviously it seems that for some reason every time I sync, iTunes wants to dump abou 4 GB worth of crap into my iTunes_control folder.  So this issue is obviously not "solved", it is a persistent problem.  You need the run the utility to remove the crap every time yo sync with iTunes.  Or better yet, remove all the crap that Apple leaves on your phone and never sync with iTunes again.  That will be my answer personally.

     

    Finally, I find it amusing that Apple is facing a class action lawsuit for their iPhones having actually less available space than advertised.  Those guys filing the suit don't know the half of it.  You take a 16 GB iPhone and format it and add the OS and you are down to 11 GB or so, which is what the lawsuit is about.  But realistically speaking you also have to subtract another 4 GB or so for this "Other" space bug, which effectively reduces a 16 GB phone down to the 7-8 GB range.  It's preposterous.

     

    I hope they win the lawsuit against Apple.  Apple needs to be knocked off its arrogant pedestal a bit.  

  • by dxing97,

    dxing97 dxing97 Jan 2, 2015 7:52 PM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 2, 2015 7:52 PM in response to TwisterDC

    I've finished syncing the iPhone, and everything looks good so far.

     

    Something I noticed when I was syncing music back on: the yellow bar of grief appears while it syncs (about ~100 MB), then it disappears after syncing is complete.

     

    Today, when I synced again, it appeared again! This time, it's only about 1.6 GB, about half of which I can be sure is an offline map app I recently got (the doc 'n data bar still shows ~100 MB, similar to what it was before deleting the music folder), and most of the rest is likely just app data.

     

    If it becomes a recurring problem, I'll post an update. Until then, problem solved (for now?).

     

    I'm glad that my first post helped you out, even if its only temporary. I also wouldn't buy iMazing just for clearing out iTunes_Control. I only used it so I could definitively check to see if the media folder was the culprit. Try using iFunBox instead of paying for iMazing. 

     

    It looks like Apple knows about iTunes syncing problems. They added a box specifically for syncing issues on iPods/iPhones in their feedback page. I find it a little strange that they haven't fixed or addressed these problems when they've been around for so long. Syncing is either a real mess of a solution or they just don't have the need to fix it. They are pushing for more cloud-based stuff, so that might be why they've neglected to do or say anything.

  • by andrewrodney,

    andrewrodney andrewrodney Jan 11, 2015 5:59 PM in response to fredrik.motin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 11, 2015 5:59 PM in response to fredrik.motin

    Had the same issue with "other" and saw a huge 18 gig (yes that's gig) size. Tried just about everything I could find. In the end I did a full backup of the phone in iTunes. Then from the phone deleted everything: Reset, Erase All. Then restore after the reboot from iTunes. I ended up with a tad over a gig in "other".

     

    Here's the site where I found the specific instructions which  fixed this mess:
    http://www.tomsguide.com/faq/id-2349989/reduce-data-iphone-ipad-itunes.html 

  • by ManSinha,

    ManSinha ManSinha Jan 11, 2015 6:19 PM in response to andrewrodney
    Level 6 (10,257 points)
    iPhone
    Jan 11, 2015 6:19 PM in response to andrewrodney

    That has always been the solution - there are other links as well - but glad you found an answer

    http://www.imobie.com/support/what-is-the-other-on-my-iphone.htm

  • by TwisterDC,

    TwisterDC TwisterDC Jan 11, 2015 6:35 PM in response to ManSinha
    Level 1 (7 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 11, 2015 6:35 PM in response to ManSinha

    Sorry, many of us beg to differ that this has always been the solution. It is not.  Wiping your phone clean and reinstalling everything, which can waste several hours of someone's time to begin with, is only a temporary fix. Days at best.  Sync with iTunes again and Other quickly grows again. Don't waste your time giving yourself the brain damage of doing this over and over again.

     

    Unfortunately it is a bug.

     

    The only option is to use one of the utilities cited on this thread that will allow you to delete the iTunes_control directory. THAT works although you will have to do it every time you sync.

     

    My advice is to either buy a non-Apple phone where they might give a $h1t about fixing bugs, or buy an iPhone with bigger capacity, ie 64 GB.

  • by andrewrodney,

    andrewrodney andrewrodney Jan 11, 2015 6:42 PM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 11, 2015 6:42 PM in response to TwisterDC

    I beg to differ. It didn't take hours to go from 18 gigs to just over 1 gig, maybe an hour (mostly waiting for the restore which I did while eating dinner). I spent far more time trying differing solutions that didn't work. From deleting and reinstalling each email account, messing with Safari Cache etc. I've done a few syncs thus far in iTunes, the "other" area in iTunes hasn't grown (it might).I also dropped nearly $30 on one of those utilities (PhoneClean) which crashed a few times and bought me maybe a couple meg's afterwards. Nothing like the Delete/Restore option I used. And that utility took a long time too, with little gain and money out of my pocket. Buying another non Apple phone isn't a viable solution nor suggestion for many of us.

  • by ManSinha,

    ManSinha ManSinha Jan 11, 2015 6:45 PM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 6 (10,257 points)
    iPhone
    Jan 11, 2015 6:45 PM in response to TwisterDC

    I shall level with you - I do a lot of things in my professional life and touch many aspects of the public interface - that said - I could not for the life of me fathom why they eliminated the 32GB model and stuck with the 16GB but Apple I am sure has smarter minds than mine and their own reasons.....

  • by TwisterDC,

    TwisterDC TwisterDC Jan 11, 2015 6:55 PM in response to andrewrodney
    Level 1 (7 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 11, 2015 6:55 PM in response to andrewrodney

    I sincerely hope that it does work for you. for most of us though, the Other fills right back up in a week. Best of luck.

     

    Phoneclean is worthless. I wasted my $30 on that too and it saved me like dozens of bytes. It does not remove the main offender which is in the iTunes_control folder. Until Apple fixes the bug that is the only way.

  • by jneb,

    jneb jneb Jan 19, 2015 9:52 AM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jan 19, 2015 9:52 AM in response to TwisterDC

    The 78GB of Other appeared after I interrupted a very long sync of about 76 GB of music and synced a few times. 


    I use a Mac and iFunBox is Mac OS X compatible.

     

    Deleting all files in iTunes_control\Music worked great.

    I unchecked music syncing in iTunes, ejected the iPhone from iTunes, used iFunBox to delete everything in the Music folder under iTunes_control, quit iFunBox, unplugged and plugged iPhone back in to Mac (to remount in iTunes), and backed up iPhone in iTunes. That cleaned up all but about 2.6 GB of Other.

     

    Deleting the iTunes_control directory caused problems.

    I then ejected iPhone from iTunes, used iFunBox to delete the whole iTunes_control directory, quit iFunBox, and unplugged and plugged iPhone back in to Mac. This time iTunes asked to restore from backup or set up as new phone. I restored. I could try to delete the albums and other files. Instead, I'll tolerate the lost 2.6 GB.

     

    Thanks for the very helpful thread!

first Previous Page 8 of 9 last Next