Navigate
X

What Is “Other” In iPhone Storage? Here’s The Truth & How To Delete It!

    David Lynch
  • 6 years ago
    • Categories: Settings

You’re running low on iPhone storage, so you went to check what’s taking up space. To your surprise, there’s this mysterious “Other” taking up a significant amount of space on your iPhone. In this article, I’ll explain what “Other” is in iPhone Storage and show you how to delete it!

What Is “Other” In iPhone Storage?

The “Other” in iPhone storage is mainly made up of cached photos, music, and video files. Your iPhone saves these cached files so they’ll load faster the next time you want to access them.

If you’re someone who likes to take a lot of photos, stream a lot of music, or watch a lot of videos, your iPhone may end up dedicating a lot of storage space to files classified as Other.

Settings files, system data, and Siri voices also fall into the category of Other, but those files typically won’t take up as much space as cached data.

How To Delete “Other” In iPhone Storage

There are a few ways to delete “Other” in iPhone storage. Since a few different things fall under the umbrella of Other, we’ll have to complete a few different steps to clear it out.

Clear Safari Website Data

First, we can quickly clear cached Safari files by going to Settings -> Safari -> Clear History and Website Data. This will clear Safari’s cache as well as erase your iPhone’s browsing history on Safari.

Set Keep Messages To 30 Days

One way to begin clearing out the Messages app cache is to only keep old messages you receive for 30 days. This way, you won’t have unneeded messages that are a year or older taking up valuable storage space.

Go to Settings -> Messages -> Keep Messages and tap on 30 Days. You’ll know 30 Days has been selected when the small checkmark appears to its right.

Offload The Apps You Aren’t Using

You can cut down on a lot of Other iPhone storage by offloading the apps you don’t use very often. When you offload an app, the app is essentially deleted. Little bits of data are saved so you can pick up right where you left off when you’re ready to reinstall it.

To offload an app, go to Settings -> General -> iPhone Storage. Then, scroll down and tap on the app you want to offload. Finally, tap Offload App to offload it.

Put iPhone Into DFU Mode & Restore From A Backup

If you really want to put a big dent into the Other in iPhone storage, put your iPhone into DFU mode and restore from a backup. When you DFU restore your iPhone, all of the code controlling its software and hardware is completely erased and reloaded. DFU restores can often deep software problems, which could be causing “Other” in iPhone storage to take up a lot of space.

Note: Before performing a DFU restore, save a backup of the information on your iPhone so you don’t lose any important data!

Your Significant Other

I hope this article helped explain what “Other” is in iPhone storage and how you can delete some of it. If you have any other questions about iPhone storage, feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

Thanks for reading,
David L.

View Comments (35)

  • hello... I have iphone X 64 GB, my phone memory was full, suddenly I lost all my photos, while I was checking "others" file, I realized that all my photos transferred there, because my photo space size was 20 GB, and Others file now is 25 GB ( before it was 5 GB only ) .. how can I return back my photos if they are in Other file... thanks in advance

    • It's possible that these files became corrupted and unreadable. Since they became unreadable, they may have been reclassified as "Other" in storage. You might find some luck with finding the files and folders where the images are located. Here is an article from Apple about how to view files and folders on iPhone. If you aren't able to find them or if you continue to have trouble getting it to work, you may need to restore or DFU restore your device to remove the files. I hope this helps!

  • As a prelude to going nuclear on my iphone (full delete and restore) to get rid of OTHER, I did a back up to iTunes and guess what, 23 of 64gb was freed up. My educated guess is that itunes clears the cache BEFORE it backs up the phone. So my suggestion is that BEFORE you delete a whole bunch of apps etc do a simple back up to a PC or laptop via iTunes and then check the storage space on your iphone.

  • I had 64gb iPhone 6s and had the same problem with “other” category occupying more than 28GB. I tried many diff methods but only thing worked was logging out and logging in again from Apple ID. Later my “other” section occupied 10GB only.

  • I had 64gb iPhone 6s and had the same problem with “other” category occupying more than 28GB. I tried many diff methods but only thing worked was logging out and logging in again from Apple ID. Later my “other” section occupied 10GB only.

  • David, I need help with my iPhone 6s. I spoke to 3 Apple techies. A total of 4 hours of my time. One of them had me reset the phone. I lost quite a few things. The second person wanted me to do an erase. She had me delete my Gmail. The third fellow wanted me to upgrade. He wasn't any help to me.

    The problem is I'm out of storage. The "Other" is more of the culprit - 7.58GB. I'm lost now!

    I thought of going to Best Buy for help. Any ideas?

    Thanks, Pam

    • I had 64gb iPhone 6s and had the same problem with “other” category occupying more than 28GB. I tried many diff methods but only thing worked was logging out and logging in again from Apple ID. Later my “other” section occupied 10GB only.

  • I have 64gb and I’ve never gone over my storage until recently!! I even deleted everything I didn’t need. I have google photos so everything is backed up there. The other day it showed I was good and then today it started telling me my storage is full!! It’s super strange..

  • you guys should download google photos it helps to free up some memory space if your photos are the ones taking up the memory. That helps me to clear up my memory and keep the photos that i want backed up.

  • So I’ve got 64GB of space and my photos were taking up 45GB so I backed up and deleted all of them. But after I deleted them I suddenly had 50GB more of ‘other’ replacing all the storage that my photos used. It seems like I’ve wasted lots of time and good photos trying to clear out my storage.

    • This might be because icloud photos gives you 30 days to recover the recently deleted photos.. perhaps try to clear the recently deleted folder as well- for icloud photos

  • I did all the above and it didn’t help much. It went from using 127GB of space to using 126GB. For one GB, I’d rather have all my old text messages and save my Safari data. I need to clear up 60GB-90GB, not 1GB-2GB. :/

  • I have 16GB and don’t have any apps.because other in my iphone is “10GB” and I don’t have any free space in storage.I tried everything but nothing.not I am going to restart my phone because there is no other way

    • My iPhone won’t let me sign out of my Apple ID. I’m having the same problem as everyone else. :( DFU seems to be the only route

  • I’m getting really annoyed and sad about all this at this point ‘cause I have 49GB out of 64 GB filled with photos and the rest apps and I deleted all of my photos almost and then ended up with 7GB of photos. I was happy for a moment cause that meant I would have a lot of space to do whatever I want with my phone. A few minutes after all this I instantly got shot down because my iPhone storage was filled with “other” when I had just spent the whole day deleting valuable pictures and videos. This is pretty annoying because I sacrificed good photos, videos, and memes thinking I was gonna have a lot of free space. But no I got sh!t on by apple and they filled me up to 63.5GB out of 64GB almost instantly. I tried many methods and nothing worked. Someone please help me this is getting really annoying and sad at this point.

    • @David & i play dead by daylight when you delete your photos it goes to ‘recently deleted’. You will find this in the app ‘Photos’ when you scroll down to the very bottom of the category ‘Albums’. Go into recently deleted and press ‘Delete all’. Afterwards go back into ‘Recently deleted’ and see if it actually deleted the photos (I’ve had a problem where it didn’t work before). If it doesn’t work then try deleting them in chunks. If this doesn’t work then you will have to wait until they automatically delete themselves in 40 days after being deleted from your camera roll. Once it has automatically deleted most of them you should be able to delete them manually. I hope this was helpful.

    • omg same! i’ve been deleting so many pictures/vids, messages, and apps i rarely use & “other” takes up MORE space even though i’ve been taking so much time to delete things. i have 32gb on my phone & other will take up to a minimum of 16gb.

  • If you do the DFU method, does it automatically install the latest update? Because i dont want it to do that and if it does, i dont think i can go back to the previous version.

    • Same here. I have a 16GB phone and 5 of that is classed as "other". I have trimmed down as much as humanly possible, but still have this vague black hole that is taking up valuable space that I would like to have back.

      • Mine is 128GB! and I was fine until the last update, I was using about 20GB... then all of a sudden100GB+ is being used ?

        • It's possible that the memory chip inside the phone was damaged or became corrupted. It might show that all that storage space is in use, but it may not be. I'd say you should try and run a DFU restore to try and completely reset the memory chip. This will, I hope, rewrite all the sectors to get them usable again. Make sure all your data is backed up first. Keep in mind, though, that this may not work if the memory chip is actually damaged. In which case, you'll want to look into getting the phone repaired or replaced.

  • 8 out of 16GB is other, is that normal or unreasonable? The other items taking up soace are pics and apps, but I dont really have that many, nowhere near as much as friends. I cleared the browser it didnt help much. Wondering if Im missing something else?

  • Thanks for this help! Alas, I did the first two actions and only reduced my iPhone 5 used data from 13.5 to 13.4. I am not ready to go DFU route but it still seems so strange that the largest block of my nearly clogged iPhone is "Other" even after taking the steps to eliminate browsing historiy, Messages etc.

Leave a Comment
David Lynch: David Lynch is an expert on cell phones, cell phone plans, and other tech. After using a flip phone into his early 20s, he learned the ropes about iPhones and Androids from a former Apple employee. Today, his articles and videos are read and viewed by millions, and he has been cited by major publications including Reader's Digest, Wired, CMSWire, Consumers Advocate, and more.