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

This issue just happened to me. I hadn't sync'ed my phone or ipad in a couple months and as soon as it was done sync'ing both had 4 extra gigs if crap in other. It must be from iTunes. But my ipad went from having almost 7 gigs available to only having 2. Irritating!

Makes no good sense: I just changed the setting for synching of music, reducing the music by about a half, or 2 gig. Momentarily I saw 2 gig of free space, but nearly instantly all that free space turned to OTHER. This tells me that previously used storage is not being freed.

now what?

I had almost exactly the same thing happen yesterday

iPhone 5S 32 iOS7.1

Changed the setting on music and the my OTHER increased to 15GB and there is no room for any music. Still have not located a solution.

My OTHER has just suddenly increased to 13.99GB in a 16GB i-phone....and taken all my music space.

Read all the forums but nothing has helped...why has this happened?

This is absurd.

Do Apple care?

So, you have done a Restore? You have deleted all messages that contain videos? What other troubleshooting steps that you read on all of the forums have you done?

Unless you tell us everything that you have tried that has not worked, we have no way to know what else might help....

Cheers,

GB

1.) Do NOT restore your iPhone. It is Not necessary and is a waist of time. IMHO. And will not solve the issue.

2.) Do a full backup of your phone and sync.

3.) In iTunes, click on your iPhone after plugging it in.

4.) Go to the music tab under your iPhone and uncheck sync music to this phone. (Note you must do this under the music tab. The other similar settings don't work)

5.) start a sync with phone. iTunes will remove all music from the phone.

6.) unplug your phone from computer. Then reboot it.

7.) once phone is rebooted, plug back into computer and recheck sync music to this phone.

This should solve your problem. It worked for me and I have seen other threads where it worked. After finishing, consider upgrading to iOS 7.1.1. I hear it fixes this bug. If problem comes back before upgrading, do procedure after upgrade. Its funny how many people claim it's stuff other than music and videos. Email and other files will rarely take up that much room. Oh btw, try same procedure with video and pictures if music doesn't work. Your other category will be approximately the same size as the category (music, video, pic., etc) that is the culprit. The problem is iTunes is making duplicate copies of files on the phone when syncing or restoring and categorizing them as other. Not sure why this fix works but it did for me. :-)

Hi

I tried your solution ( several times) but sadly no luck for me..and I still have 11.84 GB of OTHER on my 16GB phone.My apps only account for 817.5MB and I have a few photos but only 16.8 MB. I have NO videos.

I don't understand at all ( though as I'm no expert this is hardly surprising)..and I read of so many " solutions".

I did a restore but no luck. I am running iOS 7.1 and it tells me this is the latest software.

I've been having difficulties with syncing and loading my music onto the i-phone from my Macbook Pro ever since I upgraded the software..having to wipe clean the i-phone every time I change my music ( which is of course absurd) and now suddenly OTHERS goes off the scale and takes up all my space.I use my i-phone primarily for the music as I'm on the road most off the time.

Any ideas or suggestions? New phone?

Regards

Thanks for the reply.

I too am seriously impressed with the efforts by many on these forums but they shouldn't have to be doing any of this simply to own ( and use) a product that should be working properly in the first place.

Frankly I'm astonished and disgusted that Apple appear to be uninterested in this serious problem.

It's hard not to come to the conclusion that their strategy and approach has changed somewhat in recent years..but their profits no doubt have skyrocketed.

Update.

I contacted Apple tech and spoke with David ( a supervisor) last night.He was very helpful though did give me the impression that these ' problems' were just part and parcel of this industry and consumers were expected to put up with them.

Anyhow I did a full new restore and my OTHERS came back down to 1GB from nearly 12GB freeing up space for my music.However attempts to sync were not all together successful as albums were only part downloaded or ignored.Turning off the sync and manually selecting proved to be much moe successful.. so this is how I will go forward.It's not perfect and can be tedious but it's progress.. and frankly I'm rather tired of all this since I updated to iOS7

I just used Zhang Jing'siTools method.

After hours of trying to clear my 9,08gb other (which was preventing me from backing up my wife's 32gb iPhone onto my 16gb so I can take her's to the Apple store) this finally worked. I was able to use this app and navigate the filesystem.There was a directory called iTunes_Control and in that directory there where over 7GBs of orphaned music files (files that were once on the phone but had been removed). I was able to delete them and got my other down to 1.02GB

Great, I'm glad my method help you. 😝

Obviously its Apple recording our calls storing them on our phone. Than when we update it takes all that data and stores it in the giant cloud of information. sounds paranoid but I think it is the best answer yet. $*^& you APPLE. oh and you agreed to it in the 100 page agreement you signed. Dont use your phone for talking.

Just wanted to chime in and say both of my daughters iPads are doing the Same thing with ios 7. Did a restore and it freed up over 9 gbs of storage on the iPad mini. This is a ridiculous problem and needs to be fixed.

I am having the same problem with my iphone 4s 16gb. I did a full restore two days ago and then rather than restoring from backup, I set the phone up as a new phone manually adding and setting up all the apps. For 24 hours, I had 10 GB of free space. Now the phone is completely full -- usage shows 0 mb free. When plugged into itunes, the phone shows 12.19 GB of other.

I am wary of wasting the time with doing a full restore again as this did not solve my problem last time.

Any advice is welcome. This is terribly frustrating.