Help clear out "other" space on iPhone

I had this problem too, I tried resetting after backing up the phone, but nothing happened. Once doing a restore of a backup worked when i unplugged my phone during the period of time the phone disappears from th itunes window and then plugged it back in after the home screen came back.

Unfortunately, today, itunes decided to put a movie onto my phone and when i went to delete that movie, I literally saw th"movies" section vanish, and the "other" section grow by 2GB. now, nothing I do seems to have any impact on the other category. What, short of jail-breaking my phone, can I do?

Restoring from a back-up will restore in the same state the phone was in at the time of backing up. So any data from apps in the Other space will be restored.

Do you mean you unplugged your phone while it was restoring from a back-up? That's not recommended until it's completely finished.

I'm not sure why iTunes would put a movie on your phone without you telling it to, or at least without your knowledge.

How did you delete the movie? I think you might need to restore from the back-up again. If the movie appears on your phone when plugging it into iTunes, find it on your phone and delete it from there.

You restored as new to fix it and it was fixed, then restored from backup to get your messages back. Then i see you admitted to keeping messages around. Sounds like you got 4.5 GB of messages that you need to let go man. Simple Answer.....NEXT?

i have an old 3Gs 8 GB Iphone that i primarily use as an Ipod these days. I had 1.42 GB's of "Other Space" being used. I did everything that you mentioned with no luck, finally, I reset "network settings" plus upgraded to IOS 6.1.2 now I am only using 1.09 GB's on "other" didnt clear it entirely but a little bit.

hey bud

i like many others have been trying to source a remedy to the unexplained usage of memory/storage on iphone , and have found a realistic solution ,i have downloaded iexplorer which has everything to combat this , basically itunes and the iphone only give you so much info on what exists on your phone , where as iexplorer allows you an indepth look at every part to your phone the folders/cache/temp folders that exist in every app , so from this i was actually able to find the app e.g(splice video editor) which was holding temp folders amounting to 4.6gb the temp folders to many apps are abreviated with tmp , , but it definately is an answer to the storage problem , no restarting , re syncing , restoring , basic right click and delete or delete the whole folder from left hand menu ,

hope this helps many as ive extensively searched and the proof is in what is what works and the most simplistic form

I just downloaded and installed iExplorer.

Turns out there were two backups of my phone's content, and they both contained every image in every SMS convo I ever had, including ones I had deleted. I'm sure this is iTunes's fault.

1) Why does iTunes need to back up this stuff twice?

2) Why does iTunes have to back up deleted iMessage convos. (Isn't it actually a bad thing that it backs them up?)

3) Why does iTunes back up my backup folder to my phone?!?! What's the point?

I don't see exactly how to go about deleting all that stuff, though. iExplorer let me download the convos I wanted to keep, so I guess I'll do a restore to new.

Can you tell me where you located those backups from to delete?

My other is at 6.55gb and I don't want to go through the hastle of starting over my phone from scratch

Thanks for the tip. Does RESETING mean that I would lose bookmarks, password settings, favorite cities (Weather) etc?

I found a site that has a good step by step on how to clear out hte Other. I had tried most of the techniques on this thread to no avail and followed the steps on this link skipping any that required jail breaking and was able to drop my 4.7 Gig Other back down to a manageable 1 Gig.

http://appducate.com/2013/01/reclaim-other-storage-space-on-ipad-iphone-and-ipod /

Wish they had a step by step guide how to.

So it really have you free 4 gigs space?

Anyone know what the 4 gigs consists of. Text messages?

Anyway can prevent saving for future messages?

Sent from

One of Rob's many iRob Devices. Pls excuse abbreviations and typos.

I found out that you can clear a lot of it under settings. Here is a list of things that can take up the 'other' space:

There are many sub-categories, so take your time to look through everything

1. Look under Safari Passwords and autofill can take up other space. delete the ones you don't REALLY need. Same thing with favorite pages. Another thing is to clear cookies and data which I know takes up lots of data and reduces your battery. This also speeds up web browsing. The only downside is that it might clear auto login, so write them down first!

2. Look under Notification Center Make sure you turn off apps that you don't need to be constantly reminded of, such as games. Only turn on the apps you know you want to see right away such as e-mail, text or personal.

3. Sounds and Alerts Like above, make sure you only have on sounds and alerts for what is most important, for this also takes up battery life.

4. Location Services and Privacy This is also like above, but be sure to go through each category it provides you like contacts, photos, and reminders.

5. Go back and go through the main categories such as Notes, messages, phone, maps, and more. be picky and take you time!

6. Now it's time for the big stuff- Go under General Under 'About' you can see what is taking up on your phone, like how it's displayed on itunes.

7. Scroll down to Usage This is where most things are taking place. This gives you a more analytical view of what's going on in your phone. It shows how much each app and system things is taking up on memory. If you see an app you don't want, it gives you the option to delete it. Look for Calander each event that you make takes up space! narrow it down to the essentials! same thing for voice memos.

8. Go through Mail Your mail takes up a lot more space than you realize! Make sure you constantly delete your junk and delete old mail that is no longer needed. Make sure that its permanently deleted, not just sitting in the trash. Then check through 'all mail' to find any lurking emails.

9. Pictures, Texts, and Phone These should be a no-brainer but most of the time people look over this. Texts with pictures and videos take up extra space, as well as the texts themselves. Make sure you don't hoard the texts for the sake of your phone! Recent phone calls and history (missed, received, unanswered) take up space, so clear that every once in a while

10. The Final Solution If even after the hours of nit picking show no results, this is the final thing to do. Back up your phone to your computer. then restore your phone back to factory settings. Then when putting data back on your phone, only choose music, apps and photos, as the rest will fill back up again anyways. Be very careful with this for it can loose info if not done correctly.

I hope this helps you and others with the same problem. Spread the word!! 🙂

I am glad I found your solutions. I am not very good at all the ins and outs of using the phone but when I read to fix the other space problem it helped me!

I went to itunes on my home computer and unchecked the sync button like was told then unplugged my phone and rebooted. This seems to have fixed the problem for me!

Now im not sure why I have so much Video space used though, I can only see that I have taken about 5 minutes worth of video.

I have found 10 GB of "Other Data" on my iPhone 5c, someone recommended me to use CleanMyPhone(http://www.fireebok.com/cleanmyphone.html) to remove them. But the support team told me that cann't remove all "other data" because some iOS app reply on these data when running.

It did work! thanks @ Joelamhk. I owe you 17GB of free Space

Thank you LondonGuy76. This was the simplest fix and it worked for me. My iPod Touch had almost 8 gb of "Other" space!

Funny thing, this happened after gradually syncing a lot of photos (10 000) through the Photos App. After that, I just couldn't sync anymore. Even though I had 10 gb free space.

After removing the non native apps and syncing again in the process LondonGuy76 suggests, the 8 gb of Other Space disappeared. I then was able to sync and cancel syncing with Photos (remove the 10 000 photos).

Curiously, about a 100 photos remained in the iPod Photos App. Couldn't manually remove them either. They slowly disappeared after multiple syncing, a few at a time.

We just cannot rely on these machines working anymore. Too bad.