How do I reclaim iPhone storage space taken up by 'Other'?

How do I reclaim iPhone storage space taken up by 'Other'?

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.

UPDATE: User Andrew S. said he deleted "a substantial number of text threads containing pictures and videos" to clean out half of the "Other" storage on his phone. Andrew claims he went from having zero free space to 1.88GB by using this technique.

Comments

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!

How do you retrieve from a backup? I am having the same problem, photos-apps-music takes up very little space but then my other disc space has almost maxed out my entire memory. I am not real iphone/computer savy and fear losing my contacts and my personal settings i have on my phone. How do i backup and how do i retrieve from backup to be up and running again? Thanks!

I have a 4 GB second generation Nano and the same thing is happening to me: Other is going up. I don't see any contacts or calendar information on the Nano, so that's not it. This seems to be a recent development. I'm running iTunes 10.2.1.1 on Windows 7.

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.

So, i have been unable to update my iphone 4 since i bought it. It is glitching and i know i need the update BUT of course the "OTHER" is in the way.
How do i find "~/Library/MobileFinder/ "
is that on the phone or itunes. PLEASE LET ME KNOW ASAP

i found that when deleting files my other goes up and i know why if u have a jailbroken ps3, get ifile then navigate to /var/mobile/library/ifile/trash
here is where all delted files are kept! hope this helps!

OMG! Thanks!! that totally works!

I've encountered the same problem. as i deleted a video directly from iPhones storage, under the USAGE, and at the same time i unchecked the same video in the iTunes library and clicked on apply and sync. That immediately increased the OTHER file storage to 2.7GB. I then powered off the phone and powered back on, the OTHER files size decreased from 2.7 GB to 600 MB. i'm still troubleshooting and trying to remove the rest. the OTHER storage surely contains all sorts of things, such as browser's temp files cache, etc. but larger files such as i had, it had to be an error reading of the syncing. the more features Apple adds to iTunes and iPhone for syncing convenience the more glitches open up to the users. i will have to research a more extensive information about that damn OTHER stuff, that even Apple supporters don't know about it. i also suspect that Apple might have a secret proprietary surveillance on our devices. this particular location ,marked as OTHER, perhaps is the same feature that Apple wants consumers subscribe to those ERROR problems report to Apple electronically. Probably that's why their tech support doesn't know anything about it, because Apple did not reveal to tech guys.

UNBELIEVABLE. The first time my iPad had 13.5GB of 'Other' I did a restore and it got rid of it. But this time I had 6.5GB and I found your post. I already suspected that when I was deleting Video on the device that it went from 'Video' space to 'Other' space. Anyway, after you post I did something I never do and it worked.

I POWERED OFF THE iPad AND TURNED IT BACK ON.

When it came back on it Synced with iTunes (because it was plugged in) and my other went from 6.5GB to 0.85GB which I can handle.

Thanks!
I hope other people find your post helpful. It is buried a bit in the chain.

Wait, I should note, the only other thing I had done was clear Safari History and Cookies and Data. That didn't take effect right away but it may have taken affect when I power off and on after that.

But I'm still pretty sure it's deleting Video files using the Video App that is the problem.
Godspeed.

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...

i did the above procedure but didnt get the message about itunes registeration with windows. Instead it ask to make sure either .dll file is valid or not.
Help me out please.

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!

try checking your facebook data if you have the facebook app, i allready commented once explaining so try find that :)

You ROCK dude!

dude I LOVE YOU!!!!!!

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