TwisterDC

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

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  • by David Margolin,

    David Margolin David Margolin May 21, 2014 7:58 AM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 21, 2014 7:58 AM in response to TwisterDC

    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.

     

    iTunes.png

  • by saltaroo,

    saltaroo saltaroo May 29, 2014 2:21 PM in response to David Margolin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 29, 2014 2:21 PM in response to David Margolin

    Thats just crazy. I was annoyed with 3GB of my 16GB being used but thats nuts. Maybe try the itools method to see where the storage is being taken up?

  • by iNonentity,

    iNonentity iNonentity Jun 1, 2014 12:07 AM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 1, 2014 12:07 AM in response to TwisterDC

    I'm pretty sure the "Other" data is the micsellaneous info saved from apps/emails/messages/etc. Example being Angry Birds; each map has it's own saved data on your phone - add up those hundreds of maps... That's quite a bit of data. All your search history in Safari? Yep. It just all ads up the tiny bits of data that don't fall into the other categories.

    Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage

    This is, of course, my own speculation. Apple doesn't really provide an answer as to what the "Other" category is. For all we know, it could be government trackings on us >.> Jk but the world may never know...

     

     

    As for the giant bar of "Other" replacing all other categories, I had this problem as well. I think it has to do with the phone adding more data onto it than it can hold, and then becoming corrupt. I was at my limit of storage, and then my computer auto-synced some apps to my phone. That's when the "Other" bar replaced the others and wouldn't connect to my computer. I deleted some data and cleared up my email trash/outbox, and voilà! Fixed it right up.

  • by geoken2,

    geoken2 geoken2 Jun 1, 2014 6:12 AM in response to iNonentity
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 1, 2014 6:12 AM in response to iNonentity

    The thing is we don't need to speculate. I used the desktop app iTools (as was suggested by someone in this thread) and managed to fined out exactly where the data was. That app let's you navigate the iPhone's filesystem and see how much data each directory is taking up. In my case it was some folder called itunes-control which contained 7 gigs of music files that were at one time on the device but had since been unsynced.

  • by marcus_30,

    marcus_30 marcus_30 Jun 7, 2014 7:16 AM in response to Zhang Jing
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 7, 2014 7:16 AM in response to Zhang Jing

    Thanks Zhang, itools has taken the straine out of restoring for me.  I had a number of files stuck under podcast and cloudassets.

     

    I tried all other methods including removing a ton of emails from my imap and none of these worked.  In the past a restore has but lose hours of time restoring my 64gb phone.

     

    Now I can do it in minutes with itools and it is free, no trial.

  • by orangebuckeye,

    orangebuckeye orangebuckeye Jun 9, 2014 4:34 PM in response to Zhang Jing
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iPhone
    Jun 9, 2014 4:34 PM in response to Zhang Jing

    While I appreciate the response, Zhang Jin's response did not help me to the fullness that it worked for him/her.  I reclaimed about 500 MB of my 3 GB "other"....

     

    I still have 2.5 GB of other.

  • by Lawrence Finch,

    Lawrence Finch Lawrence Finch Jun 9, 2014 4:45 PM in response to orangebuckeye
    Level 8 (38,286 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 9, 2014 4:45 PM in response to orangebuckeye

    2.5 GB may be reasonable if you have a lot of music with cover art, or you never delete text and iMessages.

  • by orangebuckeye,

    orangebuckeye orangebuckeye Jun 9, 2014 5:44 PM in response to Lawrence Finch
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iPhone
    Jun 9, 2014 5:44 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

    I should have explained further.

     

    I had already deleted all SMS, iMessages, email, and music and photos prior to Zhang Jin's method.  Thus I had no music cover art.  Still have 2.5 GB of other.

  • by Lawrence Finch,

    Lawrence Finch Lawrence Finch Jun 9, 2014 5:49 PM in response to orangebuckeye
    Level 8 (38,286 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 9, 2014 5:49 PM in response to orangebuckeye

    Did you sync the phone after deleting everything? Did you try Restoring the phone from backup?

  • by nayman898,

    nayman898 nayman898 Jul 2, 2014 9:44 PM in response to TwisterDC
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 2, 2014 9:44 PM in response to TwisterDC

    So I restored my device and after adding ONE app from Itunes it took 9.8 Gb of "other" space and i have app 7.9 Gb of music so i couldnt even get half of it. 16Gb iphone ends up with 12.98 Gb of space after iOs

  • by kimberlymolinaro,

    kimberlymolinaro kimberlymolinaro Jul 7, 2014 1:34 PM in response to nayman898
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 7, 2014 1:34 PM in response to nayman898

    SAME! Did  a Hard reset on my iPhone 5s. Did not do a restore from a backup, started both with phone and iTunes as a new device. No apps have been downloaded. No music. No sms. No iMessage. No emails. No Photos. I only have 12.28 GB available on a 16gb phone. 20.6 mb is Documents and Data, and 710 mb is Other. WHAT IS OTHER? I have photo stream shut off. Nothing has been synced. This is insane! The guy on the apple phone line had nothing for me, made me an appointment at the genius bar tonight. I am hesitant to download this iTools thing, considering all anyone can tell me is that somehow I got a corrupted app on my phone that is taking up space. Well now there is nothing, and I cannot fathom where 4 gigs of data is off to, is iOS 7.1.2 actually 4 gigs? 

  • by WilsonTham,

    WilsonTham WilsonTham Jul 9, 2014 1:21 AM in response to Zhang Jing
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 9, 2014 1:21 AM in response to Zhang Jing

    Zhang Jing,

     

    I wonder if there is a version which is compatible with iTunes 11.2.2.3 on Windows 7 and iPhone 5 on iOS 7.1.2.  I am facing the same issues as most here after the latest iOS 7.1.2 upgrade.

     

    Thank you. 感恩

  • by beloved-beauty,

    beloved-beauty beloved-beauty Jul 11, 2014 9:04 PM in response to CrimsonJupiter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 11, 2014 9:04 PM in response to CrimsonJupiter

    I completely agree my next phone isnt gonna be an apple product!!

  • by daemonrebel,

    daemonrebel daemonrebel Jul 13, 2014 2:54 PM in response to Thom_D
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Jul 13, 2014 2:54 PM in response to Thom_D

    I just factory reset my iphone 5s ios 7.1.2 and it seemed to fix the issue.

  • by fredrik.motin,

    fredrik.motin fredrik.motin Jul 14, 2014 3:51 PM in response to Zhang Jing
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 14, 2014 3:51 PM in response to Zhang Jing

    Zhang Jing's tip about iTools ("If you like, you can first export these folders to your computer to have a look, then you will know what's in it and what's size of them.") was exactly what I was looking for!

     

    I did this and analyzed the contents with Disk Inventory X, and found that I had 12.7 Gb worth of Voice Memo files, even though I've removed all Voice memos from iTunes (both Library and "On this iPhone"). Now "Other" is only 2.8 Gb instead of 15.5 Gb of before...

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