Why is my "other" space on my iPhone 5 / iOS 7 so large and always growing?

Question

Level 1

7 points

Why is my "other" space on my iPhone 5 / iOS 7 so large and always growing?

I have seen this question posted a lot but I don't believe I've ever seen Apple post a definitive response. If there is one official definitive response on how to keep this from happening and I missed it sorry.

I have the same problem it seems many are having. I have an iPhone 5 with 16 GB running iOS 7.0.4. As soon as I upgraded to iOS 7, I started seeing a lot of my space being taken up by "other". It was up to about 4-5 GB as I recall, which is ridiculous especially for a phone advertised with 16 GB.

The only remedy I could find that did anything was to restore my phone from scratch, which is a pain in the -ss, but I did it anyway. Initially that seemed to work and I was in the hundreds of MB of "other" for a while.

Today, about 2 weeks later, I went sync and to my amazement it was up again to 2 GB of "other". I synced it and then it grew to 2.52 GB. ***?

I am on iTunes 11.1.3 on Mac if that makes any difference.

Is there a definitive fix or something different I can do for this recurrning problem? Obviously I cannot keep restoring my iPhone once ever week or two to recapture disk space. I hardly use my phone for the apps (use my iPad for most of that) so it's not like I am doing a bunch of complicated apps with large data sets.

Update: I synced it again and now it went up to 2.53 GB.

Is there a fix for this? It is getting old having to delete all my music to make room for all this.

iPhone 5, iOS 7.0.4, Recurring problem for iOS 7.0.x

Posted on Nov 25, 2013 10:46 AM

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Answer 1

roaminggnome

Level 10

106,365 points

Nov 25, 2013 10:52 AM in response to TwisterDC

" I don't believe I've ever seen Apple post a definitive response."

You will not see an Apple response at all. This is a user to user forum.

A restore is the solve.

Not sure why it is growing at this rae.

Sorry.

Hopefully someone can give a better answer.

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Answer 2

Thom_D

Level 4

1,161 points

Nov 25, 2013 11:02 AM in response to TwisterDC

"Other" in iOS is the data that is stored by apps, such as saved game data, the cache and history for Safari, etc. Other also inclueds saved emails, especially those with attachments such as document files, or pictures. Other is also where text messages are stored on your phone. And if you receive a lot of texts with pictures in them they are also stored here and not in your camera roll.

You can delete some of this by deleting old emails, text strings, clear out Safari's history and cache, and the history and cache for any other web browser you might use.

You can also use third party programs like Phone Clean to delete temp files that you don't have any other way to get rid of. I use it once a week and lear out anywhere from 25 MB to 500 Mb of temp files and general junk.

If you can't Other reduced doing these types of deletions, look in Settings => General => Usage and see which apps are using the most storage. For example, the iWork apps store the documents you create on your iDevice in Other so on my phone I have 1.2 Gb of files saved to my phone.

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Answer 3

TwisterDC Author

Level 1

7 points

Nov 25, 2013 11:03 AM in response to roaminggnome

Fair enough, thanks. Pretty sad that Apple is not addressing the issue.

Unfortunately I have done a restore and the fix was only temporary. There is an underlying issue that has not been addressed.

I pretty much use my iPhone for only a few things.

1) Phone calls

2) Emails - usually don't open attachments here but sometimes. I use the Yahoo app for my Yahoo email, and then I use regular iPhone Mail to access my work emails.

3) Browsing news on Facebook, couple of news apps CNN, NBC, whatever.

4) Take occasional short photos videos but even those I have had to sync with iPhoto and delete on the iPhone because there was no space.

Is it possible that this is somehow related to large emails? I'm not sure why that would be but that's the only thing I can come up with. My iPad talks to the same email accounts and it has a similarly large "other" space of 2.83 GB. That in itself is irritating too, but since I have a 64 GB iPad I don't worry about it.

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Answer 4

TwisterDC Author

Level 1

7 points

Nov 25, 2013 11:05 AM in response to Thom_D

Thanks Thom_D, I was typing my reply just as you sent yours.

I think you are probably right that it is email somehow.

I don't use the apps enough to generate large data. I send or receive very few texts.

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Answer 5

Thom_D

Level 4

1,161 points

Nov 25, 2013 11:36 AM in response to TwisterDC

TwisterDC wrote:

3) Browsing news on Facebook, couple of news apps CNN, NBC, whatever.

I forgot all about Facebook. It stores a ton of stuff on your device as well.

But, yeah, if you use several different email services and access them on your phone they will quickly fill up Other. I know that there is a way to delete emails on your phone without deleting them from the server where they are stored, but I just can't remember how to do that right now. Sorry.

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Answer 6

Dec 28, 2013 9:44 PM in response to Thom_D

In my case it isn't Facebook or any other social media. I have no music, no photos, no Facebook account, nothing other than apps on my iPad Mini Retina 16GB and iTunes is still telling me I have over 2 GB of Other. I have a few Angry Birds HD games but I haven't really played them since my iPad Mini is fairly new. And I'm not syncying music or anything else. Everything I can think of is shut off. I don't even have any photos on it.

I tried a few other solutions but haven't tried a complete restore. Anyone have any ideas? I sure would love to get that 2 GB of space back since it is a sizeable percentage of my small space on the HD.

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Answer 7

TwisterDC Author

Level 1

7 points

Dec 31, 2013 2:04 PM in response to AppleTVguy

This is still not solved.

This is a little bit of venting but here it goes. I have been one good Apple customer over the past 5 years since I switched from Windows. We have multiple Macs, iPads, iPhones, iPods, iTunes purchases, you name it. I am not an "expert" user (ie not a programer, etc.) but I am an electrical engineer so I don't think I'm completely clueless either. I ought to be a very valuable customer to Apple and I can't help but feel like Apple has gone to the dark side and stopped caring when on occasion their products have some features that suck or are behind the innovation curve or ease-of-use curve. Jumped the shark? It seems like it.

Let's recap

- I have a 16 GB iPhone 5.

- Of course the capacitiy is only officiall 13.3 GB which I assume means that 2.7 GB is already used by the OS

- As of today 4 GB is used up by "Other"

- So my "real" capacity is something closer to 9 GB, which is a little more than half of the stated capacity of 16 GB. It's irriating to continually have to remove apps, music (that I paid for on the $#&^$ Apple iTunes store no less) to manage the storage.

- I get that attachments, browsing data, etc. should take up some data. I've tried to manage that to no avail.

Actions that I have taken:

- Complete restore. This was a temporary (ie one week) improvement. It also highlighed one of Apple's other recent problems in that my music lists won't restore/synchronize for days or even weeks at times. That is a whole other extremely irritating issue these days that I'll take up another time. Jobs must be rolling in his grave seeing stuff that doesn't work right - remind you of anything? Yes, I mean Microsoft. The whole reason why I switched to Apple was to stop having to manually hack and manage everything - Apple products just "worked". But no longer I guess. I still keep buying Apple gear but man, guys, get it together!

- Deleted all web browsing history, etc.

- Thinking it might be email, I even deleted all my email accounts, rebooted and resynced and it barely made a dent.

So there appears to really be no solution other than consider buying a competing solution?

Otherwise, I will probably try PhoneClean, although that costs $25. Apple ought to be supplying this type of technology as part of iTunes.

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Answer 8

TwisterDC Author

Level 1

7 points

Dec 31, 2013 8:12 PM in response to TwisterDC

Just to be thorough for anyone having the same problems I wanted to add the following updated. Today I downloaded the PhoneClean Pro suggested which cost me $25.

Unfortunately the result of the scan was "The cleaning is completed, total removed: 194 items, 3.24 KB". Yep, you read that right, I got back 3.24 KB.

I checked the phone immediately again in iTunes, and now my "other" space is UP to 4.01 GB.

This irritating and disappointing to say the least. I expect better from Apple.

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Answer 9

Jan 3, 2014 5:58 AM in response to TwisterDC

I have the exact same problem with my ipad (ipad 3 4G on Verizon). I've been researching this for the past two days and have found no solution. At this point I can say that I have identified that 8.4GB of usage space has been used up by my Camera Roll. So I have done the following:

- Disalbled ICloud

- Deleted all pictures from Photo's

- Restored and Reset the ipad

- gone in 1 by 1 to delete any other pictures that maybe remaining

So now, I have pretty much a "bare bones" I pad with only apps, no icloud back up running, and it is still regisering 8.4GB of "other space" specifically from the Camera Roll part.

Apple needs to provide some assistance here. This is unacceptable!

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Answer 10

lucad89

Level 1

0 points

Jan 10, 2014 8:30 PM in response to TwisterDC

Today I got a brand new Iphone 5s. I got the 32 gig model since my 5 did not have enough space. I set it up as a new device. Plugged it in my computer sync'd ONLY my 7.16 gigs of music and nothing else. When I plugged my phone in you can barly see the other icon. Now, 6.49 gigs in "other" is used up just from syncing my music....

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Answer 11

TwisterDC Author

Level 1

7 points

Feb 4, 2014 8:19 AM in response to TwisterDC

Latest update. I ran the Phone clean application today and deleted all browing data, messages, call history, etc. everything. It removed about 800 MB of data. Sounds great right?

Then I sync'ed with iTunes, and my "Other" when UP to 3.32 GB. APPLE: 3.32 GB of WHAT? Why is this so hard to figure out?

While I am ranting, I continue to have the problem where I buy a song on iTunes, I add it to my favorite playlist. It clearly shows up in the playlist on my Mac iTunes. Then I sync, and poof, the song disappears from my iPhone and from my playlist on iPhone. Sometimes it eventually comes back, sometimes it does not. Then I manually add it to my playlist on my iPhone 5. But when I sync again to iTunes, it disappears. Sometimes it returns eventually on its own.

I am so exasperated with Apple software lately, especially on my iPhone, that I just throw my hands in the air. When things work so non-deterministically, it reminds me of the old days of Windows. Nothing works like it should any more, and there is no fix. It's try this, try that, and if that doesn't work, oh well, but isn't Apple great?

Apple: Can you do anything right now that Jobs is gone? I am so irritated with wasting so much time on stuff that should just work. That was the whole reason that I switched to Apple in the first place. As soon as my contract is up I will definitely be exploring other iPhone alternatives such as Samsung or (gasp) even a Windows phone. I need something that just works the way it is supposed to!

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Answer 12

Feb 6, 2014 9:28 PM in response to TwisterDC

I have several mailboxes in iphone but i deleted all incoming, sent, trash.... All!!! And it's still 8GB of disc space that is used by mails?! Why, what, where? I realy don't know what to do!

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Answer 13

Feb 8, 2014 11:59 PM in response to TwisterDC

I have a 5s iphone and an iPad 2 both running iOS 7.04. I discovered what caused my Other space to grow in usage on both devices. First check your Other space using iTunes. Now play some streaming video (purchased videos) from iCloud with your device. Watch about 10-15 minutes of video. Stop the video and then reconnect to ITunes. You will notice a large increase in your other space. I do not know if youtube does the same thing.

The only way I found to lower the Other space was to backup the device to iCloud followed by Erase All Content and Settings and then restore from the iCloud. If you have music, videos and pictures you will have to then sync with iTunes to restore them on your device. You can also backup and restore through iTunes.

My temporary solution to this problem is to not watch streaming video on my devices until Apple fixes this bug.

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Answer 14

Ki4pff

Level 1

0 points

Feb 9, 2014 9:43 AM in response to TwisterDC

I have the same problem..Did a restore and the OTHER is DOUBLE what my install is (before any apps are installed) and I have turned off everything. To me it is kind of no wonder Apple Stock has dropped so much recently...I have had two iPhones now and multiple Ipads and MAcbooks.....The iPhones and iPads with the new iOS 7 seem to have the same problem and I think it is more OS related than anything else.

I have teh 16GB iPhone 5 and I have a few apps (Runtastic, Facebook Messenger, TuneLink) and all even installed apps and documents and data dont even come close to the Other usage on the phone. The only other thing I use is iTunes Match because I like to have my music on the go.

Streamong anything seems to cause massive Other build-up and they really need to address this issue because there fare more and more services being offered that are "streaming" services.

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Answer 15

Feb 9, 2014 7:38 PM in response to TwisterDC

DUDE! I had the same problem. This is how it happened to me:

I tried to sync new music into my iPhone 5 and my computer turned off. Once i turned it back on, iTunes would get stuck on the "Waiting for changes to be applied" stage of the sync. Naturally I gravitated to backing up and restoring my iPhone. Which I did but after about trying 10 times because of countless error messages. When i finally got it restored, everything was fine, but when i tried to sync my music- 1500 some odd songs- it got to about 800 and stopped which is when I noticed there was about 5 gigs of other. I came across here and had no luck, but after messing with my iPhone I turned the "Find My iPhone" setting under iCloud back on and it cut it down from 5 gigs to like one and a half. Thus letting me sync my music. I dunno if it'll work for you but it did for me. All this stuff about apps and emails is crap. To begin with i have so much music on my phone that i have only a little space left over for only 3 apps. Plus if you go Settings>General>Usage you can see what apps use what amount of space. On mine even before I signed out of my Instagram and Twitter accounts, deleted my two email accounts, text messages, and phone calls, AND moved all my voice memos to my computer all of the apps combined didnt even amount to half a gig. So anyway, just turn on the "Find My iPhone" setting and see where it gets yah. Best of luck!

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