If your iPhone, iPad, or Mac storage is full, you might start to wonder what this “Other” category is that keeps using your space. “Other” or “System” can bloat to fill up your entire device, but we can get rid of it.
Other storage includes things like Siri voices, fonts, dictionaries, logs and caches, your device’s Spotlight index, Keychain & CloudKit Database, and other system data. Depending on your device, model, and iOS/iPadOS version you might also see a category called System, which displays how much storage your operating system (iOS/iPadOS) consumes.
Typically, the “Other” or “System” category in your iPhone, iPad, or Mac storage shouldn’t use more than 10 GB of space. Of course, when you only have a 16 GB device, that already sounds like far too much. But for some users, “Other” grows much bigger than 10 GB, swelling to 50 GB or more.
It’s no good having a smart device if there’s no space for photos, videos, and apps on it. Find out what you can do to fix it below.
Quick Tips
If “Other” or “System” storage is filling up your device, we’ve summarised how to get rid of it with these quick tips:
Connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a computer:
Create a new backup using iTunes or Finder.
Update to the latest version or iOS or iPadOS.
If that doesn’t work, use iTunes or Finder to restore your device.
For Mac users, create a new backup using Time Machine.
When you check the storage on your device, wait at least two minutes for the data to update, otherwise you won’t see the latest reading.
How to check the storage on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:
Go to Settings > General > [iDevice] Storage.
Find a chart of your storage at the top of the page.
Scroll to the bottom of the list to find “Other” and “System” use.
Your largest apps are listed beneath the storage chart.
How to check the storage on a Mac:
From the menu bar, go to > About This Mac > Storage.
Hover your mouse over each section in the chart to see its category.
Click ‘Manage’ to see a detailed breakdown of your Mac storage.
For the most accurate storage readings, use Finder instead:
From the menu bar in Finder, select Go > Computer.
Control-click a file or folder and select Get Info to see its size.
Check each folder on your Mac to discover what uses the most space.
After waiting for the storage chart to update, System storage shrank from 89.6 GB to 20 GB.
What causes “Other” storage?
In its simplest form, “Other” storage includes everything that doesn’t fit into the standard storage categories: Apps, Media, Photos, Books, etc. “Other” storage usually includes a range of system files, such as:
software updates
Siri voices
cached files
and logs.
Most of these shouldn’t take up much space, but there are occasions when they bloat and fill your entire storage. This is particularly common with cached files, which build up as you stream videos or music from the web. But it also happens with corrupted software updates that keep re-downloading themselves.
What’s the difference between “System” and “Other” storage?
You might notice a lot of storage on your device goes to “System” as well as “Other.” There isn’t always a clear-cut difference between these categories, but typically, “System” includes your device’s operating software.
As well as some system files, “Other” storage also catches other file types that are too few in number to be categorized.
System and Other are listed at the bottom of the device storage page.
How do I get rid of “Other” storage on my iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch?
Follow the steps below to get rid of “Other” or “System” storage on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Continuously check your storage after each step to make sure you haven’t already fixed the problem.
And be sure to let us know how you get on in the comments section. We’d love to hear what worked for you, what didn’t work for you, and what your device storage looks like now!
For many users, the solution to their “Other” storage problem was as simple as connecting their iPhone to a computer for 10 minutes or so. We suggest you take this opportunity to make a backup of your device using iTunes or Finder.
You need a recent backup of your device for later troubleshooting steps. But it also seems that when you use a computer to backup your device, iTunes or Finder clears away corrupted or unnecessary files taking up your storage.
How to back up an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a computer:
Unlock your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and go to the Home screen.
On macOS Catalina or later: Open Finder and select your device from the sidebar.
On Windows, macOS Mojave, or earlier: Open iTunes and click the device icon in the top-left.
If prompted, choose to ‘Trust This Computer’ on your device.
Under the General section in iTunes or Finder, click ‘Back Up Now.’
Creating a backup with iTunes or Finder offloads your “Other” storage.
2. Update to the latest version of iOS or iPadOS
Apple frequently eliminates troublesome software errors with new releases of iOS and iPadOS. Update to the latest public release if you haven’t done so already. It’s likely to provide a wealth of improvements to your device.
Rather than selecting Software Update in the Settings app, we recommend you use a computer to update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This is because you need less free storage to do so, and it’s more likely to get rid of corrupted software update files that may be using up “Other” storage on your iPhone.
How to update an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch using a computer:
Unlock your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and go to the Home screen.
On macOS Catalina or later: Open Finder and select your device from the sidebar.
On Windows, macOS Mojave, or earlier: Open iTunes and click the device icon in the top-left.
If prompted, choose to ‘Trust This Computer’ on your device.
Under the General section in iTunes or Finder, click ‘Check for Update’ and install any updates your computer finds.
We recommend you install the latest version of iPadOS or iOS available for your device.
What if I don’t want to update my device?
iOS 12 improved performance over iOS 11 for many devices.
Many users with older devices are hesitant to update to the latest software. This is sometimes a wise move, as older devices struggle to keep up with the latest software demands. But it might also be why you have so much “Other” storage.
Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch may have downloaded a new update already. If this is the case, it’s already taking up “Other” or “System” space, unless you update or restore your device.
Downgrade from beta software or un-jailbreak your device to get rid of excess “Other” storage.
3. Restore your device to a recent backup
Corruptions in your operating software can take up a lot of “Other” storage on your iPhone. You can fix this by restoring your device to a recent backup using iTunes or Finder. You shouldn’t lose any data doing this, but it does reinstall your operating software.
Use the cable that came with your device to connect it to your computer.
Under the General section in iTunes or Finder, click ‘Restore Backup.’
Select the most recent backup and wait for the restore to complete.
You can only use the Restore Backup button if you already made a backup to your computer.
4. Get rid of cached files and other data
If your “Other” storage still takes up a lot of space after restoring your backup, you might need to clear some of the cached files and data on your device.
These build up over time as you use your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch for various different tasks. Your device should automatically delete them, but you can do it yourself following the tips below.
Clear Website Data and History from Safari:
Go to Settings > Safari.
Scroll down and tap ‘Clear History and Website Data.’
Confirm you want to ‘Clear History and Data.’
You need to sign in to websites again after your clear Safari’s data.
Delete old conversations from Messages:
Go to Settings > Messages.
Under ‘Message History,’ choose to keep messages for 30 days.
A build-up of old messages can take up lots of space on your devices.
Remove your recently deleted iCloud photos:
Go to Photos > Albums > Recently Deleted.
In the top-right, tap ‘Select’ then choose ‘Delete All.’
Due to the way iCloud works, you should also temporarily change the date to at least 40 days in the future:
Go to Settings > General > Date & Time.
Turn off the ‘Set Automatically’ button.
Change the date to at least 40 days in the future.
Go Home, then return to Settings and correct the date.
If you can’t change the date manually, turn off Screen Time on your device.
Temporarily sign out of iCloud:
Go to Settings > [Your Name].
Scroll down and tap ‘Sign Out.’
If prompted, enter your Apple ID password.
Choose what data to keep on your device and tap Sign Out.
Go Home, then return to Settings and sign in again.
Any data you don’t keep on your device is still on iCloud.
Update, Offload, or Delete apps:
Update every app on your device:
Open the App Store and go to the Today page.
In the top-right, tap the user account icon.
Scroll down and tap ‘Update All.’
Offload data from apps you don’t use:
Go to Settings > General > iTunes & App Store.
Turn on ‘Offload Unused Apps.’
Delete apps you no longer want:
From the Home screen, touch and hold unwanted apps.
Choose ‘Rearrange Apps’ from the pop-up menu.
Tap the ‘X’ to delete unwanted apps.
Tap the ‘X’ button to delete unused apps.
5. Erase your device and reinstall the latest software
After erasing your device, restore it from a backup or set it up as new.
You already restored your device from a backup, but if you still can’t get rid of “Other” storage on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch you may need to erase it entirely.
We suggest you do this using DFU mode (Device Firmware Update mode), which erases and rewrites every single line of software and firmware on your device. It’s the deepest level of restore available to iOS and iPadOS devices.
After erasing your device, set it up as new and import data using iCloud, iTunes, or Finder.
Use the steps below to reduce “Other” or “System” storage on your Mac. We’ve listed the steps from most to least common, hopefully you don’t need to use all of them.
1. Back up your Mac using Time Machine
Time Machine is a great tool for Mac users, it saves snapshot images of your Mac going back in time. That way, if you deleted a file two weeks ago, you can look at your Mac from that time and retrieve it.
Most people use Time Machine with an external drive. If that drive isn’t connected all the time, your Mac still saves Time Machine snapshots to the local system files. The next time you make a Time Machine backup, your Mac transfers the snapshots to your Time Machine drive.
Other common uses of “Other” or “System” storage are iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch backups made on your Mac. If you use iTunes or Finder to back up your other devices, that backup uses space in your system files.
Take a look at your existing device backups using Finder or iTunes, depending on your version of macOS. Then delete old backups you don’t need anymore.
How to delete device backups in macOS Catalina or later:
Connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac.
Open Finder and select your device from the sidebar.
From the General tab, click ‘Manage Backups.’
Select the backup you want to delete and click ‘Delete Backup.’
How to delete device backups in macOS Mojave or earlier:
Open iTunes on your Mac.
From the menu bar, go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices.
Select the backup you want to delete and click ‘Delete Backup.’
Delete old backups that you no longer need or ones you have a newer copy of.
3. Manually delete large files and folders in Finder
Storage categories work slightly differently on your Mac. Most noticeably, you probably find “System” uses far more storage. That’s because it also counts some of your personal files, making the categories less useful.
Control-click and open the Get Info window to find out how big each folder or file is.
Anything you don’t need can go to the Trash, but make sure you empty it and make a new Time Machine backup before checking your storage again.
Don’t delete anything from the Library or System folders unless you’re certain you don’t need it.
4. Use a third-party application such as OmniDiskSweeper
OmniDiskSweeper is only one of several third-party apps you can use.
A range of third-party applications exist to get rid of “Other” or “System” storage on your Mac. Many of these make it easier to locate the problematic files or automatically remove unnecessary files from your system files.
You should independently research any third-party app before installing it on your Mac. Particularly apps claiming to clean up or speed up your Mac: they’re often bogus.
5. Reinstall the operating software on your Mac
If you still can’t get rid of the “Other” or “System” storage on your Mac, it may be time to pull out the big guns. Use the recovery partition on your Mac to reinstall your operating software. This rewrites each line of code in macOS and hopefully removes the corruption that’s eating up all your storage.
Wait at least 30 seconds for your Mac to fully power off.
Press the power button to turn on your Mac, then immediately press and hold the command+R keys.
Keep holding the keys until you see the Apple logo, a Utilities window should appear afterward.
Select Reinstall macOS and follow the on-screen prompts.
macOS Recovery Mode is a handy way to fix a wide range of problems with your Mac.
We hope this guide made it easy to get rid of all that “Other” or “System” storage on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. If it keeps coming back, just return to this article and try a different step.
And don’t forget to let us know how you get on in the comments below!
Dan writes tutorials and troubleshooting guides to help people make the most of their technology. Before becoming a writer, he earned a BSc in Sound Technology, supervised repairs at an Apple Store, and even taught English in China.
As i have seen in so many posts regarding this issue. Cleaning up the safari cache, or updating to IOS 14 did not work for me. So every time my other storage goes up, i just restart my ipad/iphone to clear the other storage. I don’t know how, but it does the trick..
Thank you for writing a great piece on Iphone storage. I have a 16GB Iphone that was full. “Other” was taking 4 GB and System was taking 6 GB. I went through all the steps except wiping my phone clean on my first attempt. “Other” was reduced, I forgot how much, but it returned the next day. On my second attempt something happened and my phone would not turn on, it just kept showing the Apple icon and then would go blank, then show the icon, then blank etc. It would not turn on. I shut down Itunes, unplugged the phone, then turned on Itunes and plugged in the phone. Same thing for a while then I tunes detected the phone had an issue and suggested I wipe it clean. I did, then loaded the back up I made that evening. That process freed up almost 4 GB. Thank you for your help.
I tried first method – did not work – tried second method and the window “Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected” is grey – I cannot check it or uncheck it.
Now what?
I could back up and restore, but what happens to all my IMs and such? Does all that get saved?
We all want to delete the data we get on our iPhones sometimes. Whether that’s because you want to keep your Messages app tidy or because a message had something in it you don’t want someone else to see, a simple swipe usually takes care of things.
The most secure way is using professional third-party software like iPhone Data Eraser, which is a reliable and effective tool to smash everything on your iPhone, including musics, contacts, messages, photos, videos, apps, account info, passwords, and other personal data.
I followed what the author of this article said, but instead of doing it as new, I just restored the backup and the 3GB of other I had went down to 700MB. Thank you! This was for my iPad2
i have barley anything on my iPhone 4 and i cant take pictures, download any apps and basically cant do anything. its really annoying because a friend of mine has the same phone with the same GB but has soo many pictures and lots of apps and still has room! i have 5 apps and like 200 pictures and thats all. barley any music as well. i want to restore my phone and try but i still want my messages! like is there any way to keep your messages?
This should have been fixed long ago. I watch many movies on my Ipad and whenever I delete one it just turns into other space. I have to disconnect from my computer turn off the Ipad and then reconnect to computer and boot the Ipad. This works for me most of the time. The fact that Apple hasn’t made the fix to this a priority is baffling.
I just found the best solution to remove all other data in my iPhone4 on iOS 6.0.1. After every new suggested way in internet I just got only fraction of this yellow bar reduced and that was frustrating. Then I thought about Cydia, because my iPhone is jailbroken. First I installed a program called CleanMyI but it also did very small part of the job. Then I found iCleaner. In couple munutes iTunes showed no yello bar at all and I’m finally happy 🙂 Good luck!
didnt work for me either…….everything went back to the same as it was.
how do you backup as NEW, in other words how do rename or name the backup as NEW??
I’m having the same issue. 10GB of other. I can’t backup to icloud as it will only hold 5GB. I’m stuck doing restore from my computer and it does the same things. Just puts the corrupt data right back on. Did you expand icloud storage or how did you figure it out?
Funny, but I have 25GB of space, but AFTER doing the restore, even though I have a 64GB iPhone, the full backup is about 3 1/2 Gigs, so it fits. Try to do a backup with the 5 free. It will probably work. I think Apple keeps a record of what you have, but doesn’t need to back up the actual songs, movies, etc.
yea i have the same problem ” i got 9.4 GB data on others … dunno why
i have no calender events , my contacts its about 20m.b i backed it up and deleted,… i got i cleaner and cleaned all chases , temp , logs ..
i wanna know WHY THERE”S 9G.B IN OTHERS.. !
Note : i got 6.1.2 ios and i can see that all ppl whos facing the problem already have the same version..
I really don’t understand why there is 1GB+ other data on my iPad4 (6.1.2 OS) while my iPhone4 (6.1.2 os) doesn’t have even single byte. Both are been synchronized on same computer and same iTune version. Anybody have another idea why or having same problem?
Thanks
I have a apple iPod touch 4th generation with a storage of 8 gb. 1.30 gb of my iPod space was occupied by others. It grew every day .1 GB. So this is what i did and it works really works. If you have a wallpaper app delete it. You can get it for free when you need it from the app store. Move all your pics to your computer and delete them from you iPod. This gave me a extra 2gb space. Hope this helped.
using iFile I found out that there were around 3 gig under /var/mobile/Library/Assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate which I deleted without noticing any problems
I tried all sorts of things to get rid of the other. What i didn’t want to do was restore via itunes as I did not want to take iOS 6. In the end i just flattened the phone back to zero from within the phone- Settings/General/Reset/Erase all content and settings. From itunes I then restored as a new phone. Bit of a nuisance as I’ve lost all stored wifi passwords etc but other is down to 0.3gb which is fine.
Thanks for the article. I had to try the final suggestion – reset and then back up .. it worked wonders! Others was over 4G but after doing what you suggested went to 1. Thank you!
I have a 64 GB I phone 4S and had a 17 GB OTHER section. I normally use iCloud for backup, but I also occasionally back up to my MacBook Pro for security, and also to do a faster restore. I had tried hints from many websites, but nothing seemed to work. I tried doing a restore from the computer, but that just put back the 17 GB other section. I then try to restore from iCloud, and that actually worked. I did find initially that it didn’t restore all of my programs, but then I hooked it up to the computer and the computer restored all the applications music etc. perfectly. I didn’t lose anything, including memos notes, and all my applications were put back in their original locations. I was able to add after doing this about 10 GB of movies, games et cetera. I now have 6 GB free, and less than 2 GB in my other section. The great thing is that my iCloud backup is now under 1.4 GB! This is terrific because I can now back up a 64 GB iPhone with the free 5 GB that Apple offers me!
Is this something that’s just arisen on the i-devices? I suddenly noticed the other day that my “Other” yellow bar had become large. As far as I can remember, it was always thin and negligible. I had never heard of this problem before and it seems that, of late, many people have experienced it.
Is there something different in a recent version of the iOS?
In my case, I noticed it after I had installed Podcasts as well as after I had set up synching many, many iPhotos folders.
As always with these things, which of hundreds of variables is responsible is hard to determine. The number of solutions are legion, too.
The hold down home and power button reset did NOT work in my case; neither did the check/uncheck “Open iTunes when connected”. N.B.: That choice will be greyed out for many users. You have to go to iTunes, Pref, Devices, and uncheck “Prevent iPods, etc. from synching”.
I also tried the turn off synching of photos and turning that back on– no dice. I even deleted all photos.
I started to get into the Disk Aid… Media, iTunes Music Control trick that’s been touted– but some have reported that renders their music players non-functional. And the DA warning not to play around with those files unless you know what you’re doing was enough to scare me off.
I’m still playing around; have synched some more times, deleted several apps I don’t use; deleted some photos within non-Apple camera apps; etc.
Somewhere along the way, my yellow bar did drop below 1 gb, so I guess I have to be content. (It certainly wasn’t anywhere near the 3gb, 6gb, 12gb, etc. that people have reported having.)
Yeah, I tried that too, but what if I don’t want to restore my ipod?? I have many imessages and photos, videos and voice memos that I don’t want to loose.
I have a apple iPod touch 4th generation with a storage of 8 gb. 1.30 gb of my iPod space was occupied by others. It grew every day .1 GB. So this is what i did and it works really works. If you have a wallpaper app delete it. You can get it for free when you need it from the app store. Move all your pics to your computer and delete them from you iPod. This gave me a extra 2gb space. Hope this helped.
If you update to the newest IOS it can help, also delete any apps that have had problems downloading via wi-fi recently. Go to general/settings/usage to delete apps and data. If the data is corrupted I believe that the only way to delete it is by restoring it. Hope this helped pals 😀
~ Your Friend
Kate, did you ever get yours figured out. I did a reset on my iphone se and after the reset before restoring or anything it still shows i have over 11gb on other. i dont see how to fix it.
SKsays
Becky, I think the way out on this one is to connect your iPhone into a computer running iTunes and then doing a restore. That usually cleans up the the “other” space. Remember to backup and then restore.
Rahul Gulia says
As i have seen in so many posts regarding this issue. Cleaning up the safari cache, or updating to IOS 14 did not work for me. So every time my other storage goes up, i just restart my ipad/iphone to clear the other storage. I don’t know how, but it does the trick..
Norm says
Thank you for writing a great piece on Iphone storage. I have a 16GB Iphone that was full. “Other” was taking 4 GB and System was taking 6 GB. I went through all the steps except wiping my phone clean on my first attempt. “Other” was reduced, I forgot how much, but it returned the next day. On my second attempt something happened and my phone would not turn on, it just kept showing the Apple icon and then would go blank, then show the icon, then blank etc. It would not turn on. I shut down Itunes, unplugged the phone, then turned on Itunes and plugged in the phone. Same thing for a while then I tunes detected the phone had an issue and suggested I wipe it clean. I did, then loaded the back up I made that evening. That process freed up almost 4 GB. Thank you for your help.
Rick says
Just to add that restoring from the cloud worked. Thanks to all!
Aqua says
Holding down the home button and power button didn’t work for me. it just showed more ‘other’ rather than have it go down
AndyBobandy says
I tried first method – did not work – tried second method and the window “Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected” is grey – I cannot check it or uncheck it.
Now what?
I could back up and restore, but what happens to all my IMs and such? Does all that get saved?
I just don’t want to lose data.
Thanks in advance.
jeffmartin says
We all want to delete the data we get on our iPhones sometimes. Whether that’s because you want to keep your Messages app tidy or because a message had something in it you don’t want someone else to see, a simple swipe usually takes care of things.
The most secure way is using professional third-party software like iPhone Data Eraser, which is a reliable and effective tool to smash everything on your iPhone, including musics, contacts, messages, photos, videos, apps, account info, passwords, and other personal data.
yalesky says
it is strictly classified data: NSA files are colored yellow “others”
not uploaded yet – so you have to keep it on your device for now
Camilla Deedrick says
This is a super great love here you blog i contents to come.
Iiona says
I followed what the author of this article said, but instead of doing it as new, I just restored the backup and the 3GB of other I had went down to 700MB. Thank you! This was for my iPad2
marian says
i have barley anything on my iPhone 4 and i cant take pictures, download any apps and basically cant do anything. its really annoying because a friend of mine has the same phone with the same GB but has soo many pictures and lots of apps and still has room! i have 5 apps and like 200 pictures and thats all. barley any music as well. i want to restore my phone and try but i still want my messages! like is there any way to keep your messages?
thetruth says
This should have been fixed long ago. I watch many movies on my Ipad and whenever I delete one it just turns into other space. I have to disconnect from my computer turn off the Ipad and then reconnect to computer and boot the Ipad. This works for me most of the time. The fact that Apple hasn’t made the fix to this a priority is baffling.
totomitak says
I just found the best solution to remove all other data in my iPhone4 on iOS 6.0.1. After every new suggested way in internet I just got only fraction of this yellow bar reduced and that was frustrating. Then I thought about Cydia, because my iPhone is jailbroken. First I installed a program called CleanMyI but it also did very small part of the job. Then I found iCleaner. In couple munutes iTunes showed no yello bar at all and I’m finally happy 🙂 Good luck!
Maddi says
This did not work. I have an 8gb iPod 4, and the Others is up to 3.9gb of space.
Savoy says
didnt work for me either…….everything went back to the same as it was.
how do you backup as NEW, in other words how do rename or name the backup as NEW??
Nathan says
Read my replay further up. I tried everything to get rid of 17GB of other. Restoring from iCloud worked. If you don’t have one, set up is free.
Caroline says
I’m having the same issue. 10GB of other. I can’t backup to icloud as it will only hold 5GB. I’m stuck doing restore from my computer and it does the same things. Just puts the corrupt data right back on. Did you expand icloud storage or how did you figure it out?
Nathan says
Funny, but I have 25GB of space, but AFTER doing the restore, even though I have a 64GB iPhone, the full backup is about 3 1/2 Gigs, so it fits. Try to do a backup with the 5 free. It will probably work. I think Apple keeps a record of what you have, but doesn’t need to back up the actual songs, movies, etc.
Medo says
yea i have the same problem ” i got 9.4 GB data on others … dunno why
i have no calender events , my contacts its about 20m.b i backed it up and deleted,… i got i cleaner and cleaned all chases , temp , logs ..
i wanna know WHY THERE”S 9G.B IN OTHERS.. !
Note : i got 6.1.2 ios and i can see that all ppl whos facing the problem already have the same version..
help please ..
Nathan says
Read my replay further up. I tried everything to get rid of 17GB of other. Restoring from iCloud worked. If you don’t have one, set up is free.
Kyle says
I tried this and it did not work for me, the Other is still like almost 3 GB! HELP!!!
stieve says
Hey, Apple, where you are? Shall we go for Samsung and android?
Mya'sIpad says
I really don’t understand why there is 1GB+ other data on my iPad4 (6.1.2 OS) while my iPhone4 (6.1.2 os) doesn’t have even single byte. Both are been synchronized on same computer and same iTune version. Anybody have another idea why or having same problem?
Thanks
girl_101 says
I have a apple iPod touch 4th generation with a storage of 8 gb. 1.30 gb of my iPod space was occupied by others. It grew every day .1 GB. So this is what i did and it works really works. If you have a wallpaper app delete it. You can get it for free when you need it from the app store. Move all your pics to your computer and delete them from you iPod. This gave me a extra 2gb space. Hope this helped.
hal9ccc says
using iFile I found out that there were around 3 gig under /var/mobile/Library/Assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate which I deleted without noticing any problems
iGnome says
I tried all sorts of things to get rid of the other. What i didn’t want to do was restore via itunes as I did not want to take iOS 6. In the end i just flattened the phone back to zero from within the phone- Settings/General/Reset/Erase all content and settings. From itunes I then restored as a new phone. Bit of a nuisance as I’ve lost all stored wifi passwords etc but other is down to 0.3gb which is fine.
Daphne says
Thanks for the article. I had to try the final suggestion – reset and then back up .. it worked wonders! Others was over 4G but after doing what you suggested went to 1. Thank you!
Nathan says
I have a 64 GB I phone 4S and had a 17 GB OTHER section. I normally use iCloud for backup, but I also occasionally back up to my MacBook Pro for security, and also to do a faster restore. I had tried hints from many websites, but nothing seemed to work. I tried doing a restore from the computer, but that just put back the 17 GB other section. I then try to restore from iCloud, and that actually worked. I did find initially that it didn’t restore all of my programs, but then I hooked it up to the computer and the computer restored all the applications music etc. perfectly. I didn’t lose anything, including memos notes, and all my applications were put back in their original locations. I was able to add after doing this about 10 GB of movies, games et cetera. I now have 6 GB free, and less than 2 GB in my other section. The great thing is that my iCloud backup is now under 1.4 GB! This is terrific because I can now back up a 64 GB iPhone with the free 5 GB that Apple offers me!
Paul says
Is this something that’s just arisen on the i-devices? I suddenly noticed the other day that my “Other” yellow bar had become large. As far as I can remember, it was always thin and negligible. I had never heard of this problem before and it seems that, of late, many people have experienced it.
Is there something different in a recent version of the iOS?
In my case, I noticed it after I had installed Podcasts as well as after I had set up synching many, many iPhotos folders.
As always with these things, which of hundreds of variables is responsible is hard to determine. The number of solutions are legion, too.
The hold down home and power button reset did NOT work in my case; neither did the check/uncheck “Open iTunes when connected”. N.B.: That choice will be greyed out for many users. You have to go to iTunes, Pref, Devices, and uncheck “Prevent iPods, etc. from synching”.
I also tried the turn off synching of photos and turning that back on– no dice. I even deleted all photos.
I started to get into the Disk Aid… Media, iTunes Music Control trick that’s been touted– but some have reported that renders their music players non-functional. And the DA warning not to play around with those files unless you know what you’re doing was enough to scare me off.
I’m still playing around; have synched some more times, deleted several apps I don’t use; deleted some photos within non-Apple camera apps; etc.
Somewhere along the way, my yellow bar did drop below 1 gb, so I guess I have to be content. (It certainly wasn’t anywhere near the 3gb, 6gb, 12gb, etc. that people have reported having.)
Orange says
Yeah, I tried that too, but what if I don’t want to restore my ipod?? I have many imessages and photos, videos and voice memos that I don’t want to loose.
girl_101 says
I have a apple iPod touch 4th generation with a storage of 8 gb. 1.30 gb of my iPod space was occupied by others. It grew every day .1 GB. So this is what i did and it works really works. If you have a wallpaper app delete it. You can get it for free when you need it from the app store. Move all your pics to your computer and delete them from you iPod. This gave me a extra 2gb space. Hope this helped.
Your Friend says
If you update to the newest IOS it can help, also delete any apps that have had problems downloading via wi-fi recently. Go to general/settings/usage to delete apps and data. If the data is corrupted I believe that the only way to delete it is by restoring it. Hope this helped pals 😀
~ Your Friend
Kate says
I tried all of these things, including restoring my iPhone, but none of them worked. I still have 4.50 GB of other data on my phone. Any other ideas?
Becky says
Kate, did you ever get yours figured out. I did a reset on my iphone se and after the reset before restoring or anything it still shows i have over 11gb on other. i dont see how to fix it.
SK says
Becky, I think the way out on this one is to connect your iPhone into a computer running iTunes and then doing a restore. That usually cleans up the the “other” space. Remember to backup and then restore.