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

Try going to voice mail messages; clicking on deleted messages; clicking clear all.  I was surprised to see so many old messages still on the list.

I quite frequently have had this problem over the years.  The other portion of my phone grows with every sync of my phone to iTunes.  There comes a point where it takes up the majority of the space on my iPhone, making the device near unusable. 

When it grows to this extent is usually cased by an error during the syncing process.  Any information iTunes can't reconcile during the syncing process is saved out of sight, out of mind, in the 'other' section.

You will never be able to see or recover this section unless you are very savvy and know how to poke around the archived iPhone back-up on your computer.  (if you are thinking of trying, stop.  It will not be worth your time and effort, or if using third party software, the money or spyware associated with it *cough* iTools *cough*).

The only fix I have found that works is to back up your phone to iTunes, and preform a 'restore'.  This erases the content of your phone, and restores it to factory settings.

That is you phone will be as if you took it fresh out of the box.  You can preform a restore from back-up through iTune, or iCloud to get your content back. 

Lo and behold your have trimmed the mystery meat.

What other posters have said is true.  The other section can have temporary files, that you can trim using various applications, or deleting iMessage and text threads, but you will never be able to find where those gigs of storage went, if your 'other' problem is due to a syncing.

Thanks for the reply ishrocker. I like the detail for which you laid out and thanks for the screenshots.

However, in my experience (granted I did this awhile ago), but from what I recall, when I re-store from backup, it just puts the phone right back in the state of the backup.  So yes, I get my "good" content that I obviously want to keep, but I also get the "bad" content (all the problems) along with the backup.  So the problem is still there....

Thank you for the reminder.  I just had to preform a restore today.  If you do restore from a back-up where you had the 'other' problem, you will be right back where you started.  I recovered the majority of my information by Syncing and not restoring from back-up.  I will edit post to reflect this.

apparently the forum will no longer allow me to edit my post.  hopefully people read the whole thread

Hello ishrocker, I was able to read your last post and I am giving this a try right now, will keep you updated, but from what I understand, do not restore from backup but rather sync the information on correct?

That is correct.  Just please be sure that you have synced you information prior to restoring the phone to factory settings.  Save any important photos through iPhoto or your photo program of choice.  Syncing your phone after the factory reset should bring back the majority of information.  Please let me know how it works out for you.

Hey ishrocker, that worked like a charm, I noticed when you first restore the iphone, you have to restore from a backup but I synced up my music manually rather then from the backup, I only have 1.11 other stuff, must be a shadow of music I have downloaded before, or sometimes music that is checked off my recently added goes away after a period of time and when I sync it up again, the recently added music goes away, but maybe it is leaving a shadow? But whatever, it worked and thanks!!

SI you did restore from backup, not set as factory new then sync?

So what I did was this, I unchecked the sync music under my iphone, backed up, then restored to back up, which had no music, then checked sync music and synced only the music I wanted, brought it right down to 1.11 GB

Those 2 Gb that you actually want back are used by the iOS on your device, you will get it back if you completely restore the device without installing any software, it can be used a cutting board after...

Imagine a hard drive that has 320 Gb without OS, it will have 318 with OS u need it for the thing to work...

A. Why do u want the space if u barely use it?

B. Why didn't u buy a bigger device?

Ok guys this is the solution the problem with other taken up to much space on iPhone after iOS update. When i did my update i saw that all my music was being transfer but when i went to check it on my phone it was not there, after checking on iTunes the storage in music was zero and the storage under other was 7 gigs this meant that the music was on the phone but not properly place for some reason. In order to solve this issue you must delete the music on the phone with a file desktop manager that gives access to your phones files ( You do not need to jailbreak). Step 1: download and install ifunbox (it is free) Step 2: click under Raw File System, Step 3: click on itunes_control (only iTunes_ might appear if the screen is not full), Step 4 click the music folder, Step 5: Deleate all the folders inside, each folder contains music. Step 6 Disconnect your iPhone and reconnect to iTunes. ****Trust me it works, after this you can delete the software if you like and continue use as usual. ****

I Haven't found an iPhone file management app for iPhone that doesn't have a reputation for trojans, and spyware what are malicious and hard to delete.

A quick search reveals ifunbox is one of those apps.

TwisterDC wrote:

 

Since I was the original posted I wanted to make a couple of comments, updates, and a summary from where I see things:

 

1) To your point, the OS takes up about 3 GB right off the top.  Thus, a 16 GB iPhone 5 has a capacity of 13 GB.

2) The "Other" is not included in the 3 GB that the OS takes up

 

This "Other" bug seems to have started with iOS 7.  It is a wonder that Apple is incapable or unwilling to fix this.  I agree with others that it probably has something to do with being remnants of syncing.  Something Apple should fix.

 

 

1. Not quite. There is a difference between the spec of 16 GB base 10 and the way memory is reported on the phone in binary, where 1K = 1024 bytes, not 1,000 bytes. iOS takes about 1 GB, the rest of the difference is simply a different way of measuring the same capacity.

2. This is true, but it DOES include iOS system data.

The "Other" CHARACTERISTIC (it isn't a bug) started with iOS 1.0. If you go back 7 years in the forum you will find continuing discussions of "Other" from the very beginning. As already posted, "Other" is real data. Occasionally, Other includes data corruption, but for most people it is real data that they are using. The quiescent "Other" has grown over time as features have been added to the phone. For 1.0 it averaged around 200 MB, but then the phone didn't do much. 2.0 saw 300 MB, when it got to 3 it was around 500 MB. And so on. 7 on all of my devices (2 GB) is about the same as 6, which was only slightly larger than 5 (1.5 GB).  Other also gets larger as the capacity of the phone increases. This is because you use more of the capacity, and there is overhead with that usage. For example, each song on your phone that has cover art stores the image in Other. The music is not in Other, but the art is. And as you add songs the music catalog (database) grows, and that is in Other also.