Overcapacity of "other" data during iTunes sync

It means you have corrupt data on your phone. You will need to restore the phone to get rid of the massive other data on your phone.

That is a huge amount of "Other"! Typically, "Other" takes about 1GB or a little more.

My suggestion is you restore the iPhone. Sync it to iTunes, then choose "Restore" from the iPhone's summary page in iTunes. You will eventually be asked if you want to restore from a backup. Try that first, but it may not solve your issue. If it doesn't, then do the restore again, this time choosing "restore as new" and then manually sync.

It is highly likely you have some corrupted file(s) caused by a wayward app. Scrutinize your apps carefully to find a suspect one (or more).

Glad to help! Hope you find the culprit app(s).

Enjoy your iPhone.

I fixed this without having to do a full restore.

Basically, there's a corrupt app that needs to be removed. So this is what I did:

1. Unplug the iPad/iPhone from iTunes

2. Remove the app or apps from your device that you installed since your last sync. If you like, you can do this one by one, starting with the most recently installed app and then work backwards until you find the offending app but you'll have to go through to step 6 in order to find which one it is.

3. Once you've removed the suspected offending app, restart your device

4. Shut down and restart iTunes

5. Plug your device into your Mac/PC

6. Select your device from the devices list in the left column and have a look at the coloured file allocation bar chart at the bottom of the window to see if the massive "other" has reduced to normal size. If it hasn't, return to step 1 and start over. If it has, move on to step 7.

7. Sync your device.

8. Re-install the apps that you removed that you want to keep. It's possible that the offending app won't cause the same problem and that it probably only corrupted during its last sync. Maybe by an interrupted sync or something.

Hope this helps

I had exactly the same issue with about 40GB of "Other". After several restarts of iTunes, my Mac and the iPhone, suddenly iTunes was able to finish the sync and the 40GB of "Other" were gone.

I had exactly this same problem with my 4s. I finally figured it out and it's even easier than resetting or the other complicated solutions mentioned here.

At some point, iTunes had de-selected "manually manage my music" and I didn't realize it. It HAD been set to manually manage but at some point iTunes thought I would like the absurdity of my device being unable to add new content despite having free space. I re-checked "manually manage music and videos" and suddenly my Macbook and iPhone were both on the same page as my iPhone having 4 gigs of free space left. And I am now free to add as much music as I please!

I seem to have fixed this issue by simply checking and un-checking the Manually manage music and videos checkbox.

I was presented with a warning (sorry I don't remember what it was) which I accepted and then the phone re-sync'd. It took about two hours to complete so be patient. 🙂

Not sure what caused the issue, I think I pulled the phone of the charger during a sync but I can't say for sure. Hopefully it won't happen again. I've been having quite a few seemingly random and intermittant sync issues since I (accidentally) upgraded to iOS7.

J

oops...that doen't work.

Thanks! You saved me a ton of time. The "other" file was 25gb when I tried to sync from iTunes. I deleted my most recently downloaded app from my phone, then restarted iTunes and the problem was solved.

Thanks. Followed your advice and fixed the issue without full restore. It saved a lot of time. Infact, when connected to iTunes if we go to Apps, we can sort the apps by date, which helped me to identify the ones I installed recently.

Thanks again.

This fixed it for me. Seemingly out of nowhere I had about 18GB of "other" and therefore my phone wouldn't sync. I took it to the apple store and they did a complete wipe and start from scratch. I took it home and plugged in to iTunes and started to restore from my back-up from that morning. And there was still a massive "other" data. So from iTunes I clicked on my phone, then apps and then sorted my apps by latest date added and then I clicked "remove" and the second app clicked on immediately showed a reduction of about 16GB of "other" data. So yes I think you are right, it was a corrupt app.

Thank you soooo much. I've been trying to get my sync happening for days. I use my Ipad for the ballet classes I teach and my 'Other' was suddenly, after the latest update, 43.15GB!!!! I couldn't get the class music and videos back that I use in class. So frustrating. I deleted messages, emails, tidied up the Ipad generally, took off any new apps (before reading your post), Took off some videos, took off heaps of music... nothing helped. I even tried to Restore, but it would let me do that either. Left it overnight. Found your post. Tried to restore this morning and yeayyyyy! I now have 34.29GB of free space, and my 'Other' is now 883.2MB. 😐 It appears to be syncing OK now. So grateful for this community, really helpful to know I wasn't the only one and that ,by communicating, the problem can be solved inexpensively.

I was able to sync my 5s to my mac after I unchecked "Sync with this phone over wifi" in the Options section of Summary. Before that I had the "Over capacity" notification with only "Audio" and "Other" showing in the usage color bar. No need to reset the whole phone.