How do I get rid of "other" storage

I spent several hours removing Safari history and Old text messages and Old Emails... and STILL had 5.05 GB of "Other" on my iPhone 6 when I re-connected the phone to iTunes. Yes, I rebooted the phone before reconnecting it to iTunes. HOWEVER, after calling Apple, and they were confused as well... and kept telling me..."Gee. Yes, I've noticed that problem with my iPhone as well..." I tried sorting the APPs in the iTunes Tab to view by SIZE instead of by name or type (with the iPhone connected to my Mac) and Voila! The "Other" size shown in iTunes reduced back down to 880.9MB - which is about what it should be. I also Unchecked the Sync Box for Photos before "sorting the Apps". I don't know why this worked, but the Senior (third tier - third time I told my story to apple), said he didn't know why - but sometimes iTunes gets "stuck" and does not give an accurate reading of the iPhone Device and maybe "sorting" just forced it to re-evaluate the iPhone contents. I don't know why iTunes does not re-evaluate my iPhone when I un-dock and re-dock my phone., or when I delete stuff and then re-boot the phone and then re-dock the phone into iTunes - but heck... another WEIRD WORKAROUND for Apple's bad developers... Bring it back to the US of A, folks!!!

Many THANKS for posting this!! 🙂

I just finished clearing the 'Other' storage on my iPad (4th Gen late 2012) by following this link http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Other-on-the-iPhone

I previously had around 6 GB on 'Other', more than 10 GB on apps and only over 3 GB of free storage which didn't seem right. I know that I had a few digital magazine apps installed and that took a bit of space. But also there were a few games that I completed already still there and took a lot of space. So I followed the link above and went through what I need to keep and to clear. The whole process took me a couple of hours. Now my apps is reduced to just over 3 GB and my 'Other' is now less than 500 MB. Yay.

Hope this helps you too 🙂

To All,

On a brand new phone or a iphone who's all data is deleted by using reset the "Other" space is still 400MB. I guess IOS needs 3GB to run.

2.6 software files size + 400MB for "other".

ios 8.4 took 1.4 GB for download.

2.55 GB is software when it is unzipped.

400MB extra to run ios.

ios consumes almost total 3.0 GB. which is too much for my iphone 4s 8 GB. 😠

Will apple do something. ?

After erasing all content and settings twice on my iphone 6 twice I decided to try a different tack.

Plugged my phone into my iMAC, opened image capture, selected my phone from the list, highlighted all the photos in the list, hit erase and VOILA!!!!! OTHER IS GONE!!

You are correct with the idea of clearing out your photos. I kept getting the message that I was running out of storage. My iPhone 5 had almost 13GB of 'other'. I tried all the suggested removal of old messages, visited websites, emails, etc and it did not make any difference.

After taking some photos, I noticed that the size of 'other' increased!

My suggestion is this:

1) Connect your phone to iTunes and back up everything.

2) Delete all the photos except for the ones you absolutely need to have on there.

3) Delete all the photos that are in the deleted photos folder.

4) Once done, disconnect the phone. Turn it off and on again. Then connect your phone back to iTunes and check how much your 'other' is.

Mine is now 680MB. The lesson learnt here is after deleting approx 1800 photos and videos, remembering each photo is approx 2MB in size, if you do not back up and remove your photos/videos, you WILL run out of room

I've had this issue for months now. Recently, it was getting really bad . . . I had over 6G in "Other", and less than 2G left on my 32G iPhone 4s. I did a couple of fresh syncs with Photos to make sure I wasn't losing anything, then took off every photo in my camera roll. (1400 photos).

No change.

Then I discovered that iOS keeps the photos for 30 days before *actually* deleting them. {gahhhhhh}

So I went through the "Recently Deleted Photos" and nuked all 1400+. Manually. On my phone. {double gahhhhhh}

I now have 8.9G free on my phone.

I just wish there was a way to NOT keep deleted photos for thirty-that's-waaaay-too-long-who-chose-that-setting-days. Or to batch delete in the Recently Deleted photos.

I had about over 1GB of Other on my 8GB touch 4th gen but only could shrink it to 626mb by restoring it from a backup.

I found that the "other" data was tied to photos and videos taken on my iPhone 6 (64g).

I deleted over 2k pics and videos (still have 1k pics and vid on the phone) and my "other" data went from 20+g to 8.6g.

I tried doing the restore, but kept getting the "other" data as the pics and video and info would go back on the device.

I backed up all my photos and videos before deleting.

Hope this helps you.

As I "FINALLY" got this right - I wanted to give back - 1st Post - Hope it works for others!!

I did as OzGadget said - Still no joy.

I then did a combination of what OzGadget AND AnnaLea did....= JOY!

In Summary:

1) Connect your phone to iTunes and back up everything. (inc photos and Vids)

2) Disconnect your phone.

3) Delete ALL the photos from your phone

4) Delete all the photos that are in the deleted photos folder.

5) Once done, disconnect the phone. Turn it off and on again. Then connect your phone back to iTunes and check how much your 'other' is.

6) If like me you had a HEAP (2000+) of photos - you will need to do these steps (4 and 5) a few times to ACTUALLY delete them all. I found that approx half would delete each time (despite selecting them ALL in my deleted items folder)

7) Eventually you should get down to about 400MB of "other".

8) Re-synced what photos i needed from iphoto - and BINGO ! All good.

Now my 64GB iphone 4s has 40GB of Audio and 15GB of images. even some spare capacity !- and other is still around 400MB.

I hope that helps!!

Simon.

PS - Disclaimer - (I also DELETED ALL of my music during a sync too - as i was getting frustrated - Not sure it was actually needed as the issue seemed to be with the images and vids)

Thank-you - after months of trying to clear - this actually worked. Updates complete & apps installed = happy iphoner

For the past few weeks I have been wondering why I keep losing 1GB of data over night.

The "Other" space was increasing every time I was creating space by freeing up Photos or Music from my iPhone 4S 16GB iOS 7.4.

Luckily I noticed a pattern. Every time there was an iOS update alert on my phone, e.g. iOS 9.0, 9.0.1, I was being prompted about it. Even though I was clicking on "Do Not update now". it was reserving space on my phone. This happened twice since Sep 16th.

I was so frustrated that I tried to figure out why I was losing free space and having a larger "Other" data block. I started to feel that perhaps the iOS download has started without my confirmation and even though it's not appearing in my "App Usage" list, it may be taking up some space.

I gave in and clicked "Download and install" iOS 9.0.1 because I suspected there were broken download of the iOS on my iPhone.

I was right. Upon the complete installation of iOS 9.0.1 I got my 2 GB space back.

I am happy with the upgrade to iOS 9.0.1 so far.

Hope this help some people who could not get their space back on their phone on older iOS.

NOTE: When I scanned my iPhone 4S iOS 7 using PhoneClean, it did not tell me it would free up those Gigs, it said it would only clean 45MB.

this worked for me too re this issue! iphone 5s 16GB suddenly has no free memory- why?

I'm having the same problem as all are mentioning is this huge chain and have had since I downloaded IOS 9.1. Not sure if it's related but it's around the right timing and frustrating as ****. I even just upgraded to a new phone and built as new, but when I sync with my cloud to backup it came right back and I don't know what it is to delete!!!

Other is 9GB, while my apps, photos, documents and music is less than 3Gb combined.

Apple!!! Please fix this.

The worst way to loose a customer.......one at a time.

Tried it. It worked for a while, but without adding any apps, music, data etc... it grew exponentially again over a few days and right back where I started.