Help, iPad's "other" space taking so much space!!!!!

(I'm posting this to a few of these types of threads in the hopes that people try this before needlessly performing a restore.)

This is what helped me, I had over 8 GB used up by Other with absolutely nothing else on my ipad mini.

Go to Settings > General > Usage

Videos was storing 8 GB of data from iCloud for movies that I "streamed". I picked up on someone who said that the iOS doesnt actually stream movies from iCloud, it downloads them to the device and for some reason doesn't list them under videos in iTunes.

I Tapped on Videos, then Edit, and deleted the movie data. All of the "Other" data was instantly freed up.

No need to restore.

That didn't work for me on my iPad Air, SMD915, though I suspect Videos is the cause of my problem since the amount of storage used by Other ballooned after I streamed movies. The only video listed in the Video setting was a music video, which barely took up 100MB. I'm restoring the iPad now and Other shrunk from 8GB to less 1GB.

Restoring worked perfectly! Thank you!

I stream movies using the videos app. recently when ihad to restore it was because the videos app under settings showed "no data" so i could not delete anything. MY ipad 4 at the time was using over 27gb of space. It seems iTunes does not stream to an iPad, however it does download it to a temp folder and play it. What we need is a way to clean the temp files off the ipad without having to do a restore. There is an app out there, however when i looked it up it costs 30$ for hte app. no way im paying 30$ for an app. Apple needs to allow us to clean up temporary files!!!

On android there is no issue cleaning out temp files...

this usually happens to me when I encounter failed downloads and retry downloading them again and again, I use iTunes to download apps with huge file size in case of a download failure

I am adding my voice to this thread because I have the same problem. I purchased an iPad air 32GB in November. I have backed it up done a clean install, removed all my music, removed all my photos disconected my email only to have my other space consume all the space on my air. Right now other is 14.10GB. I feel certain this space is being used by tempary files but this is crazy. I think if I had the largest iPad Air I would still run out of room. I hope Apple fixes this soon.

Did you try powering it down (completely shutting it off, NOT putting it to sleep)? Wait a minute. Then power it back on. Much simpler than a restore and it takes my other way back down to about 1 GB.

Just restarted & it had no effect.

dkrm dude wrote:

Just restarted & it had no effect.

Restarting is not a solution for excess "Other". You need to restore the phone as new.

I have done that twice. Doing restore works for a short while but "Other" just starts getting larger & larger. It takes about a week for "Other" to eat up about 1/3 on my hard drive. I think it is crazy to have to restore my iPad every week just to clear my temporary storage.

In that case, something is corrupting your data. Restore AS NEW. Use it for a few days without adding third party apps. See what happens. Then, add the apps you want back a couple at a time an monitor your space. Do the same thing with data.

I have been doing what you are suggestings by removing apps I use very little 1 at a time but what am I to do with an iPad with no Third Party apps.

1)Surf the web with Safari

2)Read mail only from my apple account

3)Take photos with my iPad instead of my Professional Camera.

I did not purchase this iPad for the above items only. I only use apps I have gotten from the App store & my iPad is not jailbroken.

There are not any games from Apple. All games are 3rd party. Netflix & Hulu are 3rd party.

You are certainly the poster child for this problem.

Concerning your entirely conservative usage, here are some things that I know contribute to Other:

1. Safari history, certificates, cookies, and cache take space in Other. If you clear all of these, you should see some recovery, but of course that's highly inconvenient.

2. I'm not certain to what extent or for what purposes Mail uses other, but I would be surprised if this didn't contribute something. Perhaps attachments take up space.

3. Photos and videos in your Camera Roll or other Albums don't figure in Other, but it's likely that any editing that you may have done (and even cancelled) takes up a bit of space. This shouldn't be significant, I think, but people have reported that failed (and perhaps even successful) sync's can take up a lot of space.

4. You didn't mention whether you send/receive messages with photos or videos. These take up space in Other, and can account for a lot of space. As with Safari history, you may not really want to be clearing this out. I believe that phone and voicemail history also contribute to Other, but don't know how much.

In short, Other is used by the system and apps for many purposes, and no single method to clean it out will handle every person's usage patterns, which is why you hear so many reports of something that worked for one person having little benefit for others.

Until or unless Apple figures out what to do about this (assuming that they even want to), the only "solution" is to severely curtail your use while doing frequent "clean-ups" (whichever you find help), or to buy a device with more memory.

I'm currently on a 128GB iPad, and Other just keeps filling up. Soon, I will be asking Apple when they will be offering a 1TB iPad, for which I will probably pay $2,000. It's pure genius. Speaking of which, most people I've talked to, upon visiting a Genius Bar to help resolve the problem, are told stuff like "we've never seen this before". Which I personally find utterly hysterical.

I really appreciate everyones suggestions but I think this is a problem with the iPad OS itself. I just wanted to add my voice to this thread. I hope someone at Apple reads these because I think this problem needs to be addressed. Here is a list of my main 3rd party apps and Apple apps I use frequently:

Netflix

Hulu Plus

NewsRadio KLBJ

NFL Moble

Star Wars KOTOR

Clix

What’s On

Pocket Cloud Pro

Safari

Videos (steaming videos I have purchased)

I do not use Mail, Calendar, or Music because of space issues. I also do not take photos or video with my iPad.

Also since yesterday my other has increaced to 14.3 GB. I only have 13 MB free.

I don't think apps make a difference. I have no apps on my iPad but still have this confounding issue.

All I've done is replaced movies — taken some off, added others on. No cloud. Nothing else.

It probably has something to do with not fully erasing movies.

Either way, we can all be grown-up and avoid the hystrionic and churlish whining I've seen on this board. Re-setting and restoring is a small issue. At least you have clean water, shelter, and food.