Why is ‘Other’ still taking up storage, even after erasing my entire phone ?

ebony383,

Whoa, hold on. Go back to your old Apple ID if possible. Creating a new one will create more problems that it solves.

Local iPhone storage and Cloud storage are two different things. Not everything on your phone is necessarily in iCloud.

To control iCloud storage go to Settings > Apple-ID-your-name > iCloud and scroll down to see a list of APPS USING ICLOUD and make any appropriate changes. Note: not everything on your phone needs to be in iCloud. You only need critical items that you would want to recover in the event of failure.

Also see this: How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

In terms of "other" storage see this:

"Other" is data on your phone that is not apps, ibooks, photos, music or videos. This means operating system settings and data, Safari cache, Siri cache, downloaded maps, reminders, notes, stocks, weather data, email, texts, imessages, and data for all of the apps on your phone. 1 GB is normal for Other.

When "other" gets too high it is designed to fixed itself. However, sometimes glitches occur and it stays high. Sometimes an iTunes sync will fix it. Also a restore occasionally will fix it.

Let us know how it turns out.

Looney koi wrote:

I have restored and done an itunes sync my phone 6 times today and "other" is still taking up over half my space. Is there a solution to this?

To clarify, you did each of the following?

• Turned off Find My iPhone
• Connected your iPhone to iTunes
• Performed a backup of your iPhone
• Restored your iPhone
• Installed your backup at the end of the restore process

You did each and every step above, and you still have "a lot" of Other?

If so, how much? It could be normal, based on whatever data your iPhone is keeping track of. Normally a full restore (as above) will clear out non-essential cruft that makes up a portion of Other, and that's often enough. But Other can include things like voice memos, Safari cache, MMS messages, email attachments you've downloaded and viewed (try deleting and re-adding your email account, you might be surprised how much you gain back).

But sometimes your backup is corrupt, and the only resolution is to restore again but not load your backup. That means re-doing everything, and losing data. This is a last resort, and there's no in-between method to save some data, it's all or nothing when it comes to your backup.

First, "reset" is not the same as "restore" (see instructions above). Is this exactly what you did?

If you did, and you still have 5.2 GB of Other, that is pretty high but it might be 'normal' if you have a lot of text messages with videos and photos, or have opened many emails and attachments which might be cached.

• You can set your Messages to purge after 30 days or 1 year, instead of "forever" (see Settings/Messages/Keep Messages). Or you can manually go through your messages and delete unneeded threads and/or photos and videos.
• You can delete your email accounts, then re-add them. That usually clears up caches of misc. attachments.

These are probably the largest legitimate contributors to Other, so if you do that and still have 5.2 GB of Other, then something in your backup may be corrupted. To resolve that, you'd restore again (see steps in prior post) but do not load your backup - i.e. start from scratch. That will certainly trim Other down to the bare minimum, but you have to re-do all your settings, accounts, etc. and lose some data that may be important (although if you enable Messages in iCloud, that will back up your messages and would recover even without your backup just by signing into your iCloud account after restoring).

Did you ever get yours worked out? I have the same problem. I deleted almost everything on my SE phone, still didn't bring down the "other" storage much so i did a reset and have not restored it yet. I still have over 11GB on my phone's storage taken up by Other. I have no idea how to get rid of it if even the reset didn't remove it.

Ok. Yes I did a complete restore of my phone and set it up as a new phone. I still had the 5.2 go of other so I was just wondering if that was normal. I did not restore from a back up of my phone so it wouldn’t be a corrupted back up that would cause it. Is there something still stuck on there that won’t wipe for some reason?

You restored and did not load a backup, and still have 5.2 GB of Other? That does not sound right, unless there's something in your iCloud account that might explain it (maybe a huge collection of photo/video texts which are recovered from iCloud Messaging?) If you go into Settings/ General/ iPhone Storage, what are your top 5 apps consuming storage space?

ebony383,

Make sure that you have the latest version of iTunes (12.8) and see this:

Sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes on your computer using USB

Good luck.

I have restored and done an itunes sync my phone 6 times today and "other" is still taking up over half my space. Is there a solution to this?

I have completely reset my phone and other is taking up 5.2 gb of 16 gb. Is that normal?

Ok. How do I check that? Can I restore the phone without them loading? If not how do I get rid of them in iCloud so they do not load up on my phone?

Maps 35.4 mb, music 24.7 mb, notes 16.4 mb, photos 9.3 mb, reminders 8.3 mb. I deleted watch find friends and things similar that I will not use.