Tremendous "Other" Section Showing Up in iTunes

You're right about a restore solving ... for the short term in your case.

Do you have some suspicious app that you've loaded? Corrupt files seem to be a likely cause of your huge "Other".

Try removing all of your photos - unsync them in iTunes. Restart your iPad and then sync the photos back again.

If "other" is still out of control, try resetting all of the settings on your iPad and then sync again. Settings>General>Reset>Reset all settings.

You will have to go through all of the settings all over again, enter your WiFi password, enable all of the privacy features, turn Siri on again, select your wallpaper again, all of what is included in the settings.

I had an issue unrelated to "other" and I reset all settings. It removed all of my photos when I did this, which kind of surprised me, but when I synced with iTunes in order to recover my photos, my "other", which was approaching 4GB, dropped dramatically to less than 325 MB. I can only assume that I had an issue with some corrupt photos and when I synced again, it cleared up the "other".

I am running iOS 6.1 on my iPod Touch and did not have the same bloated "other" that I had on my iPad, so I don't think it is related to the iOS at all.

It might not work for you, but its worth a shot and not quite as time consuming as restoring to factory settings and starting all over again.

Hi Lyssa,

Also, in addition to what Demo has suggested, if you have a lot of saved Text messages (especially ones with videos attached), try deleting as many of those as you can and then re-syncing. I have seen several other posts on this topic that have pointed to that as a culprit in the "bloated Other mystery"....

Cheers,

GB

Wow, what an interesting conversation! I know both Gail from Maine and Demo from other threads and think they're both highly credible. I'm not sure who has pinned down the right culprit here, but probably one of us has.

If you happen to stumble on the real culprit, would you please post the result and let us all know. I guess to do that, you would have to try each of them separately -- Demo's photo suggestion, Gail's text suggestion, and perhaps lastly my suspicious app suggestion, which would probably be the most difficult since no one app stands out as being suspicious to you.

Good luck!

To answer your last question, I would think if you did pinpoint a suspicious app, removing it would not be enough, as it would leave its residual data behind on your iPad. You would need to do a restore as well.

Hey S,

I realized after I "pinged" you last night, that we had already had the conversation about our shared West Coast/East Coast thing....sorry about that....the mind....just goes out there sometimes, and info that is right there is just not accessable! (really - I'm NOT an airhead despite being a SoCal native!!!) 😁

GB

Gail,

I never gave it a second thought. As I say, I have lots of respect for your talents presenting right on-target solutions to the folks out here.

Same for Demo, with whom I've had conversations in the past too.

Regards.

Lyssa,

Just one concern I have since you say you're updating your apps (so I'm thinking lots of them), and you don't sync often (so I'm thinking you might be updating to the iPad directly):

If you are updating to the iPad directly, it doesn't do well updating more than one app at a time. I strongly recommend doing such batch updates using iTunes on your computer, and then syncing.

Maybe I'm too late with this recommendation. If so and you're having trouble updating on the iPad, click all the updating apps to get them to "Paused" state then update one app at a time (let it go to completion), then the next app, etc.

Right back atcha, buddy! I've never seen anything but good advice from you on this forum!

GB

One key point is that between your first screen shot and this latest one, you gained 1.2GB of free space. Nice going!

It is interesting you can update multiple apps on your iPad (or iPhone). You must have an outstanding WiFi connection.