Apple Watch Storage Full -> "Other" is Responsible

I have no idea what all the “other” data on my watch is. I have no music or media on it. I deleted every app that I could. Yet it won’t let me delete stupid apps like stocks or voice memos that I don’t use. I have only a few pictures on there for the watch face. That’s it. I have it updated to current update and I have restarted it. How in the heck do I stop this annoying freaking message about it being full? How do I delete the “other” what even IS the “other”? NO ONE will answer that.

Apple Watch Series 3, watchOS 8

Posted on Nov 17, 2022 11:51 AM

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Posted on Nov 17, 2022 3:56 PM

Other, like the Other on your iPhone, is data that cannot be categorised into specific app types. It may be junk, or it may be data belonging to a badly behaved app.


I would recommend unpairing and then pairing your watch to your iPhone again. During the unpair process, your iPhone will create a new backup of the data on your watch so that you may restore from it during the pairing process. To learn how to do this, follow the steps in the articles below:


Unpair and erase your Apple Watch

Set up your Apple Watch


Once you've completed these steps, use your watch as normal and see if there's still any issues occurring with Other data


Regarding Stocks, have you tried uninstalling Stocks from your iPhone? I don'r have Stocks on either device probably because I uninstalled from iphone.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 17, 2022 3:56 PM in response to Belleslie81

Other, like the Other on your iPhone, is data that cannot be categorised into specific app types. It may be junk, or it may be data belonging to a badly behaved app.


I would recommend unpairing and then pairing your watch to your iPhone again. During the unpair process, your iPhone will create a new backup of the data on your watch so that you may restore from it during the pairing process. To learn how to do this, follow the steps in the articles below:


Unpair and erase your Apple Watch

Set up your Apple Watch


Once you've completed these steps, use your watch as normal and see if there's still any issues occurring with Other data


Regarding Stocks, have you tried uninstalling Stocks from your iPhone? I don'r have Stocks on either device probably because I uninstalled from iphone.

Jan 18, 2023 4:14 PM in response to LD150

It is not a difficulty that is personal to me alone. A quick google search will turn back many many people with the same issue. The fact that the only way to resolve it is to format the watch and start over is honestly ridiculous at this level of the company and don’t get me wrong, I love apple products. But they’ve already lost court cases for similar things to what instated. There is absolutely no reason at this day in age to not have something as simple as “delete cache” in order to resolve this issue on people’s watches. That’s all I’m saying

Jan 21, 2023 10:09 PM in response to LD150

I have a similar issue, I can't figure out what would need so much caching for such basic use of the watch. I've now unpaired twice, once with a restore from backup, and once setting it up as a new watch. When I start, and after removing every single non-built in app, I have nearly 10 GB gone, 5 or so for the watchOS and another 4-5 for other. Meaning, an empty watch has 30% or so gone. That's fine if it was consistent.


I only use the watch for listening to music while running and for emergency connectivity. If I fill with music to the brim an leave a few GB free, after a week or so, the watch starts with the storage is full message and eats away at the empty space. Sometimes, forcing the watch to restart will clear the message and restore up to a GB or so of free space. That could last from as little as an hour to as much as a few weeks.


The absolute worst part is if it happens during a run, the watch loses the ability to save the workout properly and all your stats and alerts are way off.


It would be really nice to have some control over the other space on the watch and to be able to set a limit to caching. It seems like the whole OS is cached, which is hard to understand unless the watch has no ram and the storage is used as RAM. A normal cache should be using a circular buffer and not just be ever expanding.


Seems like there is no solution until they release a watch with more storage, I was really hoping for a 64 or 128GB when the Ultra came out.


Jan 23, 2023 12:46 AM in response to LD150

I've left 10% of the total storage space of the watch as a buffer for whatever bug is causing this. That's a total of 30% gone between the watchos, the other cache and the bug buffer.


And it is a bug or restarting the watch wouldn't fix it every time. I love my Apple products, and have written several successful apps for the Apple ecosystem, but these kind of issues suck. Kind of like when music could only be 25% (or whatever the limit was) of your total storage. I'm glad that went away, but they should implement the same hard limit for caching/other.

Dec 14, 2022 3:04 AM in response to resh510

First sentence is what I said.

Rest of it is a conspiracy theory of the most illogical type. They produce updates that can be installed successfully on 5 year old phones and 4 year old Watches with zero problems. Your difficulty with your Watch is personal to you and should be looked at individually, and should not be conflated with any Apple master plan you may have imagined.

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Apple Watch Storage Full -> "Other" is Responsible

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