Iphone 5S 64gb (I have music, tv shows etc synced to it). I have been using it all year, had all of my data on it. I went to sync it today. I normally have an "other" file that is about 1.2gb, today is ballooned to 2.5gb, and then later on it increased to 30gb & gave me over-capacity messages. I know the phone is not over, it says on the "usage" panel that I have 6gb not used (which is correct). Any suggestions on how to fix this>
Did you ever find a solution to this? It just started happening to me, too. My "other" was all of a sudden 25GB and I can't sync because it thinks I'm 12GB over capacity. I tried restoring from a backup, but that didn't change anything (probably because the backup had just been created and had the bad data in it). I'm downloaded iOS to do a full restore now. We'll see how that goes. I hope a restore from backup works over a full restore since I just spent the last couple of weeks configuring the new phone to where I like it.
I managed to sort it out after a few different things, I'm not sure if it will work for you.
Back-up your phone to your computer and icloud, to be safe. Restore your phone (I did it via icloud), DO NOT use it until the restore is fully complete (you can check the icloud panel a few times to see if it has finished). Don't sync any films or music etc to your phone for a few days, it is ok to have your apps and photos on the phone. Keep backing it up like that for a few days (to both laptop & icloud - delete old back-up). I then slowly started syncing my music. I haven't had an issue since the opening post. I'm not sure if it will help, I might have been lucky.
Thanks for the update.
I did a Restore iPhone (as opposed to Restore Backup) and, when prompted, selected my latest local backup. Once I got back up and running the "other" section had shrunk to about 1GB. Unfortunately, despite using a local encrypted backup, it seems as if none of my passwords got restored, so I'm now in the process of redoing that part of the setup.
I consider iCloud backups an absolute last resort. When I first tried to do a restore from one it took hours. Local backups restore much, much faster. Especially now that we can use USB3. About 35GB of data transferred in about a half hour (or so... I wasn't actually keeping track).
Well here's what I did:
Thought back to what I had last downloaded and remembered on the Saturday before I started having my 32GB iphone 5 show me that I was 22GB over capacity, I had downloaded a song from iTunes directly onto my phone. Usually I will download songs onto my iMac and transfer them to my phone. When I went back and deleted that song (sending it back up to the cloud) my problem seemed to clear up. And when I plugged my iPhone back into my iMac, the correct GB usage was displayed & I was able to go from there, adding and deleting music from my phone via my computer.
I know a lot of folks download apps & songs directly to their phones from iTunes. I don't. But it appears that this time I got a corrupt file in a song by doing sp.
This solution seems a lot easier than the above solutions.
Hope that it helps someone.
Interesting. I think I also read something at Macworld by Kirk McElhearn that talked about downloaded/rented movies being one reason "Other" might explode. Sounds like the long term lesson is to do what you normally do -- download to iTunes then transfer to the phone. (Of course, Apple doesn't let you do that for rentals, so that only gets one so far.)
OK, I think I found the root cause, but the fix is a combination of trial and error of what was mentioned above and one additional thing. So I found my iphone syncing over wifi, but it was going nowhere. I was in a spot in the house where the AP was old/crappy, so I suspect it found my PC with iTunes and started the sync, but the sync was interrupted due to the poor network connectivity and "ended/broke" at the wrong time during the sync, leaving the temp files of the attempted sync on the phone; orphaned data seen as "other". I disabled wifi sync in iTunes, unplugged my phone. Restarted both my phone and iTunes and connected with lightning cable. checked my Music to sync again and hit apply. it recalced and the "other" was gone. so, for what it is worth, that's my theory and that is what worked for me. Let's see if it lasts...
Thanks for sharing - I am 60GB over and have fully restored to factory with a sync. I am not going to restore from a Back up and sure hope that works. If not looks like i will be trying your suggestion. Fingers crossed i don't need to as i have downloaded a few songs direct to my Phone...
I think you have a point. I have 64gb pf songs and i realised that when this happens i see ghosted images of my songs on my iPhone. Seems this is a problem Apple needs to get a grip of.... I have spent a full 9 hours over a number of days trying to sort this out (on my 5th restore and sync now)
I wanted to revive this thread as I just ran into the same issue - a 64gb iPhone 5, suddenly showing as 30gb over capacity in iTunes, and failing to synch playlisits etc as a result. I did a full restore last weekend (NOT from the last backup but fully reinstalling the system, with music & apps reinstalled from iTunes, contacts email & notes relinked from iCloud). It worked once, but the next time I plugged it into the computer it was back at 12Gb over capacity... Which was irritating because it had taken HOURS to reset.
So I started playing with the check boxes under Options in the phone's Summary panel in iTunes. Unchecked 'Automatically synch when this iPhone is connected' and Checked 'Manually manage music and videos'. The only other option checked for my phone here is 'Synch only checked songs and videos'. Instantly the usage bar at the bottom of the page went back to the way I would expect it to be, with 20Gb of free space. So if you are having this issue, maybe it's worth a try.
iphone says 30gb (other) over capacity
