It’s a very common issue to have a large chunk of space taken up by the “Other” category in an iOS device. This can become very annoying especially when you run out of space and can’t sync your new album. The “Other” category is mostly just caches, corrupt backup data, failed downloads, and system data from the native iOS devices apps.
There are a few different ways to fix the “Other” category from taking up so much space. Restoring your device will fix the issue however there are other options that may work and are easier and faster. I’ll go through them from quickest and easiest to the more drastic but effective.
Delete browser cache
Browser Cache
If you’ve had your device for a long time and have never emptied the browser cache then there is a good chance that this will delete a large portion of the “Other” space. You can delete this cache by going to Settings -> Safari and tapping the “Clear History” and “Clear Cookies and Data” button. This may also result in a speed boost on your device if you have never deleted your browser cache before.
Delete Mail account and re-add
Delete Mail Cache
Deleting your Mail cache will delete the cache of all the media and documents viewed and downloaded in the Mail app. If you go back into Mail after emptying its cache you’ll have to re-download the media or document to view it again. All your mail is stored online so deleting your mail account won’t permanently delete everything, it’s all still there, you just need to re-add your account after removing it.
To delete your mail account, go to Setting -> Mail, Contact, Calendars -> Tap on the Mail account you want to delete -> Scroll to the bottom and click the “Delete Account” button. To add your account back, go to Setting -> Mail, Contact, Calendars -> tap “Add Account…”.
Delete Text Messages
Delete Media Texts
You know where all of those pictures and videos you send / receive through text messages and iMessages are stored? It’s all stored in the “Other” category. The Messages app on your iOS device stores all of the text messages including any media files that were sent or received, dating back to the first text.
You can either delete the media one by one, or by deleting a whole conversation at once. Not everyone may want to delete the media in the messages, for those people, you should first copy the pictures / videos to your camera roll, then delete them. Plug your iOS device into iTunes after you’re done and you should see some of the “Other” storage space emptied out.
Use PhoneClean
Clear Junk from iPhone
Another tool that I recently found out about is PhoneClean. It makes removing the “Other” storage, clearing out the temporary and junk files as well as the caches, offline files, cookies, scripts and sync-failed media files really easy IF you buy it.
It automates the process, is really simple to use and can clean out a lot of storage with just a few clicks. You can download PhoneClean, scan your iOS device for free, however in order to remove the “Other” data you need to purchase it.
To use it all you have to do is download and it install it, plug in your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and click the “Start Scan” button. PhoneClean will get to work on searching your device. This can take a little while so just let it do its thing. After it’s done, it will show how much space can be saved.
Next, just click the “Clean Up” button and PhoneClean will get to work on removing all that “Other” junk if you first purchase it. PhoneClean used to have a free version that could be used clear out “Other” storage, however it’s been updated to require to be purchased before it will clear anything out.
*Thank you to the commenters who took the time to give me a heads up on PhoneClean now requiring to be purchased before it can be used. Appreciate it :)
Empty out the Reading List
The Reading list in Safari is used to save website pages to the Safari cache. Since it actually saves the page to the device, every site page added takes up space because it stores it in the “Other” category. If you go to your device summary page in iTunes on your computer and view the “Other” section while removing sites from the Reading list, you can actually see the space slowly being emptied.
To remove items from the Reading List, open Safari on your iOS device -> tap the bookmarks button -> and then tap the Reading List button.
Delete iTunes Backups
Delete Backup
If you take this route, it may help to delete the browser cache as well as the Mail account as instructed above.
To delete your iTunes backups, open iTunes, click iTunes in the Menu bar -> Preferences -> Devices tab -> then delete all the backups. Restart your device, close iTunes and then re-open iTunes.
After deleting all the backups, make a new backup in iTunes and check to see if the other space has reduced.
Backup to iCloud instead of iTunes
Switching to backing up in iCloud instead of iTunes may also work if the “Other” data is corrupt iTunes backup data. To backup in iCloud instead of iTunes, open iTunes, go to your devices summary page and select “iCloud” under Backups.
Jailbroken Device
iCleaner from Cydia
If you have a jailbroken device you can SSH into /var/mobile/Media/ApplicationArchives and delete everything there. This folder contains all the partially downloaded apps that may have been interrupted at some time in the middle of the download.
Alternatively download a free app from Cydia called “iCleaner”. It automatically scans for all unnecessary files including app crashes, temporary files, app caches, browsing history and cookies. Once it’s done scanning, simply click the “Clean” button located at the upper right of iCleaner, then go back into iTunes and check the “Other” space.
Make a backup before using iCleaner just in case!
If you haven’t Jailbroken your device or are interesting in knowing how to Jailbreak, check out my other article: Jailbreak iOS 6 on iPhone 5, iPod, iPad 4 & mini
System Restore and Restore Backup
If none of the above instructions worked for you, a System Restore will fix the issue. Make note however restoring your device will erase everything on it and will reset it to its factory default settings. If you go this route make sure you make a backup of your device first so that you can restore all your settings and media. To restore:
Restore in iTunes
- Disconnect the USB cable from your iPad, iPhone or iPod
- Launch iTunes
- Turn off your iOS device. (Press and hold the Home and Power button until it turns off)
- Press and hold the Home button while you reconnect the USB cable
- Keep holding down the home button until iTunes shows an alert saying that a device in recovery mode has been detected.
- Click the Restore button
Alternatively, plug your device into iTunes, go to the Summary page and click “Restore [your device here]”.
It can also be done without iTunes or a computer by going to Settings -> General -> “Erase All Content and Settings” on your iOS device.
System Restore without Restoring Backup
Set up as a new iPhone
If you’ve restored your device, then restored your content from the backup only to find the “Other” category still taking up the same amount of space then you may need to restore your device and NOT restore your backup.
To do this, after your device restores and it asks you for your Apple ID it will ask you if you want to “Set up as a new [your device here]”, “Restore from iCloud Backup” or “Restore from iTunes”. Select “Set up as a new [your device here]”.
This will set up your device without restoring any settings, iMessages ect. If you use icloud.com for your email address however (email@icloud.com, email@me.com, email@mac.com) then your Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Notes, Safari Bookmarks, Photo Stream, Reminders and iWork Documents will sync back up to your device once you re-add your email account in Settings -> “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” on your iOS device. This route has the highest chance of working as the “Other” category won’t be restored since it’s not being put back on the device from the backup.
iCloud
Login to icloud.com, check through your Mail and Contacts ect, to make sure it’s all synced. To keep all the photos that are in the Camera Roll you can have the latest 1000 pictures synced through Photo Stream. If Photo Stream is not enabled go to Settings -> Photos & Camera -> Turn on Photo Stream. The photos that are synced to Photo Stream can be downloaded back to the Camera Roll once you’ve restored.
Dropbox can also be used to backup your pictures if you’d prefer not to use Photo Stream. It will sync all your photos to dropbox.com where you can download them all back to your Camera Roll once your done restoring.
Here are a few more ways to get your photos off your iOS device if you like: Import photos from your iPod, iPhone and iPad
Paid Applications
The paid version of Diskaid will allow you to copy your Messages, Contacts, Call History, Notes, Media and Voice Memos off your iOS device onto your computer, however I don’t think it’s possible to copy them back onto the iOS device once you’ve restored; at least from my attempts I haven’t been able to.
thanx man. wasted a lot of time searching on the internet re iphone storage problem. going through the steps above I realised that my storage increases step by step. great job! thanks from germany!
May 16, 2013 at 2:31 pmNone of this seemed to work for me, so I explored a bit more and dug a little deeper and eventually found the culprit. I have the iPhone 5 32gb and I was dealing with about 14 gb of “other” storage. I cleared caches of basically everything and a lot of the points suggested on this site only to clean about .5gb. I eventually installed DiskAid to get a better view of the files (very to use interface). (To note, I use iTunes Match for my music and stream 21k songs, and don’t store any music files other than what iTunes Match “downloads” to my device) I suspected that iTunes Match was responsible for the “other” storage overfill. From the DiskAid menu I navigated to Storage>Media>CloudAssets, this folder had a ton of .mp3/mp4 and .txt files in it. I’m not sure exactly what “CloudAssets” folder is, my best guess is that it’s a cache from iTunes Match onto my phone (for some reason, a bunch of unwanted songs are stored onto my phone, approx 14gb) I deleted all these files and this seemed to free up about 13gb. I wasn’t worried about losing any songs because I don’t store any songs on my phone due to iTunes match. I hope this isn’t a reoccurring problem (hopefully it doesn’t save every song I stream) and I won’t have to delete this file every so often. I will check every couple days to see if this “inventory” of “phantom stored songs” grows. Hope this helps someone.
P.S. I’ve had iTunes match for a little over a year now and the service is great because it’s the only “native’ service that works like the ipod player built in to the iphone with such an imense music library, but the service has some major setbacks (such as this), but in the end, worth the $25/year.
May 18, 2013 at 11:46 pmVery interesting teddyj7. Thank you for posting this solution. I’ve never heard of that happening before, hope its not a recurring problem. If you notice this happening again could you let me know and I’ll update the article with this solution. Again, thanks for taking the time to post this.
May 19, 2013 at 9:21 amI 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!
May 19, 2013 at 12:52 pmSo if i restore to a new device, what do i do next? will i have to re jailbreak and start over? not even use my cydia back up? and once its a new device, do i just start over from scratch? seems like a pain in the ass
May 27, 2013 at 6:21 pmIf you restore your device as a new device, it will update the to latest version of iOS, which can not be jailbroken. Unfortunately yes, it would mean that all your apps would start over for scratch.
May 28, 2013 at 12:14 pmJust a thought – I had over 10G of “other” on my phone. And after trying about a million things, I decided it HAD to be something that was re-loading back onto my phone after a restore from backup. I had literally deleted every app, re-linked to my emails, and only had contacts, texts and calendar load back on. It got me thinking…what could possibly be reloading that is taking up so much space? I was texting my husband a video around the same time…and viola! Picture and video TEXTS! I scrolled up and hit “load more messages” – and all the past videos and texts are saved “somewhere” (i.e. the “other” category). I’ve been telling my husband for months that I didn’t want to restore my phone because I didn’t want to lose all my text strings (that’s something really important to me. As a mother of 3, I’m extremely forgetful, and I love to read back through texts to make sure I don’t repeat myself!) Anyway – this took HOURS, but I started manually deleting all the past videos and texts I’ve ever sent, and plugged my phone in later to find that I had almost 4G of videos and pictures linked to text conversations with my husband ALONE. Now I’m down to 4.7G in the “other” category. I still have a few more people I text regularly to go through…and I’m sure my other will come down significantly.
So keep in mind – “Other” is not necessarily corrupt data. I kept reading how my phone is probably corrupt and a restore was my only option. I wasn’t accepting that! SO, if you are like me and want to keep texts, unless you want to lost all your texts – this may be your only option! :)
Just remember – once you send a picture text DELETE IT!! Will save you this headache in the future!
May 29, 2013 at 6:14 pmThank you for the detailed comment Rachel, glad to hear you managed to get that “Other” space under control, and thanks for the tip. A few people have reported in now that media in text messages is taking up to much space. I’ve gone ahead and updated this article with information on deleting text messages to remove the “Other” space.
May 30, 2013 at 11:35 amI’ve backed up my phone and then tried to restore from that back up. However, I keep getting a message saying my iphone cannot be restored because there isn’t enough space. Any ideas?
June 12, 2013 at 3:40 pmRestore iphone back to factory settings. THEN restore from your back up.
hope this helps.
June 14, 2013 at 10:17 amI’m so angry. I’ve done everything except restore, and I don’t want to have to do that because I’ve had issues with it in the past. meanwhile, the other category takes up most of the space on my iPad.
June 18, 2013 at 10:19 pmI’ve restored this way and that way, left and right… still other is taking up space! iPod 4. Never had this issue before. In a panic, I was getting everthing set up to go on a really long plane ride with the kids. NEED THIS iPod AS DISTRACTION! Franticly yours…
June 23, 2013 at 7:55 pmFANTASTIC!! Just did most of these first steps and was able to cut my “other category” in half – from about 6G down to 3G. Thank you so much!
June 30, 2013 at 8:11 pmGlad to hear it worked for you. Thanks for the feedback.
July 2, 2013 at 12:06 pmI deleted 3 mail accounts, my personal yahoo, my work gmail and another gmail account that I believe I had to set up when I started with my iPhone (and have never used). This apparently was the mail account associated with every event I added to the calendar icon on my phone (I did not realize this at the time) When I try to add this account back, it says my password or user name is not correct. I have tried every password I can think of, nothing works. So I have lost all of the appointments and reminders I had set in the calendar. I did not realize that the calendar was even associated with a mail account to begin with. Any help ideas??
(I did go to gmail and reset my password, but that’s not working either.)
Thanks (your tips did help free up some space!)
July 13, 2013 at 4:54 amHey there Gretchen. If it was an email address you setup while setting up your iPhone then it was most likely an iCloud account, not a Gmail account. Apple uses iCloud to sync your reminders, notes and calendars. If you don’t have one it tries to get you to create one when you first setup your iPhone.
To reset your iCloud account go to http://icloud.com
July 13, 2013 at 1:48 pm