We've been getting numerous reports of users, who have attempted to sync their iPhones after the latest iTunes updates (7.4.x), finding that iTunes shows space on their iPhone occupied by something specified only as 'Other'. Often, this space may be only small amounts (a few megabytes), but we have received reports of 'Other' taking up as much as 4 gigabytes.
Unfortunately, scouring available information sources and speaking with Apple hasn't led to any type of easy resolution.
If you're experiencing this issue under any version of iTunes, you'll need to restore your iPhone to reclaim the space occupied by Other. That is the only known solution at this time.
If you've found another solution to the 'Other' issue, please let us know.
Presumably this issue will be rectified by the next iTunes update.
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The "other" on my iPhone represents my calendar information synced from Outlook.
Same for me. However, for those folks that have several gigs taken up by it clearly don't have gigs of calendar data :)
Could it be your internet cache/cookie/history?? Perhaps too many internet pictures? lol
The OTHER took up almost all my memories...6+ Gigabytes...I had to RESTORE and re-synced all over again. And I'm running on Itunes 7.3.2.6
Yes at least it was for me! I just went into the iPhones settings and then saffari and erased cache, cookie and history and got it all back, about 20 GB. ;D
well honestly i had other on my old ipod nano and it was for album artwork on there cuz it went up and down depending on how many songs i had that had album artwork
but i was watching mine just now as i'm syncing more songs to my iphone and it seems to be going down and then randomly going back to 118.45 MBs it's confusing i do hope apple fixes that
My iPhone lost its Name id on iTunes and all my media (music and Podcasts) 4GB disapeared. A new amount of other now replaces the content at ~4GB. I have now reset the name in iTunes and re-synched. The iPhone is now full with a combination of my replaced media content and the 'other' locked space.
I have had a previous iPhone that had 1 Gb of space claimed by "Other" in that case, the only way to recover was a complete restore. But that’s a painful process as it requires lots of time to set all my mail, connectivity etc again.
There must be a way or utility to recover the 'other' place.
Any help appreciated.
Well, I also got 5 GB of 'Other' after I decided to erase my library and synchronise the iphone with the Itunes in another computer.
What I did was to jailbrake the iphone (google how to do it for your firmware version), install OpenSSH (through Cydia) and see what these files were. Based on the size of the files and the date of creation (iTunes scrambles the filenames) they appeared to be the same files I had before i 'erased' them. So I deleted them manually all the music and video files that were 'created' in a given date I knew I synchronised my iphone for the last time with the previous computer.
I recovered most of the space. Although i didn't dare deleting the files I wasn't sure about.
I'm having the same problem. All of my music and videos were reclassified as Other. This means that I can't list, play, or delete any of the files in iTunes, or on my iPhone itself. The storage space is basically useless. Is the only solution to reset the whole device? Obviously that's a worst case scenario.
This is pretty disappointing.
The same thing happened to me, on my iPod touch.
I have 4.75 gb of other and all my music and video is gone.
I really don't want to reset it because my computer crashed and all my itunes music is gone, and the pictures I have on my ipod are too.
Thi is awful, I'm tired of having problems with this thing.
I just had the same problem. 5.08 gb of "Other", but no music, videos or photos. I ran the "Restore" but was prompted to backup the iphone before I proceeded. I did so, and it took some time but as far as I can see all my contacts, etc. (even saved notes) are back just as they were before the restore. Not that big of a deal really, although terribly inconvenient!
i think it was from interrupting syncs and backups that my iphone had 5gb of other (corrupt disk space as far as i can tell). a restore did solve this and i was left with only 500mb of other. about a day later though i deleted a movie file with mobilefinder (2.7gb) and was immediately saddled with 2.7gb of other. i experimented with iphone browser (don't know about any other app or ssh) and it does relinquish the space from deleted files but that doesn't help me with the 2.7gb i created with mobile finder. not sure about using terminal's rm command but i'll try it and hopefully remember to post back here. at any rate i'm in for another restore me thinks.
so for now just use iphone browser to delete files, this should hopefully avoid more "other". i hope this helps the collective. and pleeeeeeaaaase sombody find a way to recover the space without doing a restore. i wish i could code i'd give it a go.
*edit*
it was the mobile finder from cydia, not the app store
*UPDATE*
So I tested it with 700mb movie files and mobile finder is definitly not reallocating the space. Mobileterminal rm command does reallocate the space for reuse, I confirmed that as well. So that is a much safer option. Now I have to restore... again... cause my "Other" is now over 7gb. Weeeeeeak.
P.s. I already sent an email of a bug report to the current developer of mobilefinder.
*update*
So I have been informed that mobilefinder uses a trash folder and boy do I feel stupid. But hey maybe it will save some people some time. After emptying the trash folder in ~/Library/MobileFinder/ I got all that space back. But my other is still 2.7 gigs from before. Go figure.
100% Agree
hi guys,
just,i found the easy solution for this problem.
just go to the directory where u installed ur Itunes and reg again the following 2 dll files.(double Click the files)
G:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.Resources
iTunesRegistry.dll
iTunes.dll
start ur itune and you will see the light.
How do you register these dll's again?
Can you explain in more detail please? I don't follow.
how do u do that can u give me more in detail?
Doube clicking in the files you mentioned didn't work for me. Still having the "Other" issue... I live outside the USA and Apple's customer service is practically non existent here, since they only take calls from USA or Canada... If someone has another solution please help!
register the dll's with the following command from a command prompt.
regsrv32 {itunes_name}.dll then you'll get a message stating that it has been registered with windows.
Thanks for the advice. However, I must be doing something wrong. Is the idea to type it exactly as it stands or does something need to replace the itunes_name part (if so, where would I find my "itunes_name".
Thanks very much in advance - I tried all the other solutions with no luck at all...
awesome! thanks. The other on my phone is 4.1 gb and it was never there until I synced a new iphone from Apple during my extended warranty. I'm off to restore.
What happened to my music and Why do I have 18GB of space in the OTHER category? This question stumped me for a while. 90% of my music could not be found anywhere on my iphone. The only music left on my iphone was music recently purchased via iTunes mobile that had not yet been Sync'd to my desktop running the superior Windows Vista operating system.
I tried re-sync'ng my iPhone but ran into a space limitation issue. Duhh well 18GB of space was in the other category. I needed about 23GB to get all of my music back on my iPhone.
Oh yeah.. I forgot to mention that my iPhone is jailbroken. Yep I'm a rebel.
After thinking about it for 2 seconds, I put 2 and 2 together and figured that 18GB of space was the missing music. I decided to use WinSCP to snoop around my iPhone to see if I could locate the missing music. I navigated to the /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music folder and found a bunch of folders. Each folder contained guess what.. MP3 & MP4's. I downloaded one of the files to my desktop and checked the tags and low and behold, it was a missing song. I decided to delete all of the files and folders in the /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music folder. I re-connected my iphone to my computer and Synced. The 18GB of missing space had been recoverd and iTunes was putting my music back on my iPhone..
Problem Solved!!
Resolution (If Jailbroken IPhone).
> Delete all files from the /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music folder using WinSCP.
Resolutoin (If Not Jailbroken)
> Restore your iPhone..
You sir get my awesome star for the month....thank you!!!
Good job discovering that! However, that doesn't solve the whole problem for me. I had 4 GB of "other" and now I have 2.21 GB. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the free space this method provided, but I would very much like to get rid of the other 2.21 GB that are bugging me. So if you happen to find another folder which is filled with... well... crap, please let us know.
Thanks a lot!
You ROCK dude!
dude I LOVE YOU!!!!!!
Well... After I erased those files in private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music I can't play the music files...! WTF... I think I just erased the music files!!
My iPhone has BlackRa1n installed and my Other is 11.57Gb!!!
Have downloaded and installed WinSCP but have no idea how to use it.
I got a Dialogue box asking for Session information etc - what's that all about?
If you dont have a jailbroken iphone download the trial version of DiskAid here: http://www.digidna.net/diskaid/download.php
Navigate to iTunes_Control/Music and delete all files.
It worked! Thank you 50 times! No restore, my phone is not jailbroken. It saved aggravation and time. I had almost 9 gigs of other after 3.1.2 upgrade. I think it happened when someone called during sync process. Very easy solution indeed.
confirmed.
not a jailbreak phone.
upgrade interrupted.
ended up 'other' filling up iphone space.
the diskaid fixed it.
thanks
YOU ARE A SCHOLAR AND A GENTLEMAN, SIR!
NOW GO INTO THE STABLES, AND PICK ONE OF MY FINEST HORSES!
THANX, worked like a charm!legen-dary!
Fan-frickin-tastic. I was able to install openSSH and winSCP without issue and then I deleted the files you mention. Now I have zero in the "other" category. It actually didn't nuke my music, but I have a first gen 2g (jailbroken and unlocked) and I don't have the space to really keep music of significant quantity on my phone (iPod is more than fine). So now I have almost 800mg more space available on my precious 4G. :) Thanks so much.
SOLVED. yay.
Thank You......This WORKS!!!!
10/10 worked 1st time :D legend thanks :D
You are great, solved!
thx
My iPhone with OS 3.1 had more than 2 GB categorized as "Others". I delete the Mail accounts in "Preferences->Mail, Contacts, Calendars" from all my accounts I only kept Google's. Once I Sync the iPhone the space was available.
I think I win... I have 27.34 GB taken up by "other" and I have no idea why.... Help!! :o(
What I tried was this, I went into the iPhones settings>Saffari and then erased cache cookies and history. Just by doing that I got all of my 21 GB back! =)
I was syncing photos to my iPhone when I got almost 7 GB of "OTHER". What happened was that I checked the 'include videos' option with my photos. Apparently, iTunes was too retarded to figure out that it didn't have enough space on the iPhone for these videos. Funny coz otherwise OS X is usually good at estimating these and telling you "it ain't so" before even making the attempt.
So iTunes ended up shooting itself in the foot -- showing a sync error and giving me 6GB of "others".
Solution? Was what I could think of first -- UNsync my photos (by deselecting the sync photos option in iTunes and allowing iTunes to delete the photos from the iPhone) and then resync them.
It worked.
Free'd up all that space. Damn. 7GBs. Wouldjabelieveit.
I am hoping someone can help me. Today I had the same problem where the Other category seems to represent my Music, which is now gone from my iPhone. I am on Vista, so I do not know which folder to delete so that this problem is fixed. Can anyone help me?
I have tried unchecking everything but my apps and synching, and that huge Other category is still there!!
Recent iphone 3Gs and just downloaded iphone and itunes updates and ended up with over 13gb in other storage...simple solution was to hit the restore and backup....didn't lose a thing...except the 13gb of other !!
I In fact, I think it also includes itunes purchased songs that did not initially have album art. Once I added the art they somehow became unrecognizable by itunes as an itunes song and now have been moved to "other". The really bad part is I can not find the music, though purchased from itunes, in the ipod on my iphone. I've checked several songs were I added art work and they are all missing.
I was able to delete this content using iPhone Explorer (for Windows and Mac) available at http://www.iphone-explorer.com/
Solved my GBs of Other problem...
I had this problem before and the delete itunes_control worked for me once.
I just found that all in sudden I lost 3GB of space on my iPhone and I have been doing what I have done before, none worked.
Turned out I have iFile installed on iPhone so that I can check the folder size for much much easier troubleshooting. and the winner is Rock App, which ridiculously created a log file that's 3GB. I even didnt run it !
Anyway, the 3GB space restored immediately right after I deleted the file.
ssh into your iphone, go to the root, and type
find . -size +15M
THat will find all files on your iphone that's over 15 meg in size.
I found a 10+ gig log file from Rock. Hope this helps.
Thanks, My rockapp Log file was 8.92GB! Delete, reboot. Working fine again. Had me scared. I think something weird is going on today with this log file, it grows and grows until you delete it. Good luck everyone.
Can someone please note the location of the rockapp log file? I have the same problem but can't find the file. Thanks!!