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.

Newest iPhone FAQs

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.

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Anonymous replied on June 10, 2012 - 7:57amPermalink

my songs do not play, even after syncing. deleting the files from iTunes_control/music. it did however delete other!

Anonymous replied on June 17, 2012 - 5:32amPermalink

I FUCKING LOVE YOU BRO..IT WORKED LIKE A CHARM!!! I HAVE MY SPACE BACK!! I LOVE U!! <3 < 3

Anonymous replied on July 31, 2012 - 12:09amPermalink

i did this and now my music wont play

Anonymous replied on August 8, 2012 - 9:18amPermalink

YES! Thank you so much I freed 7.3gb by just deleting stuff in the mdt section!! Thank you!

Anonymous replied on September 30, 2014 - 2:48amPermalink

what is the mdt section please?

Amber replied on September 23, 2012 - 5:06pmPermalink

I can not figure out how to do this, would you mind a little bit more broken down for the instructions? Do I do this through my phone? Thanks

Anonymous replied on January 6, 2014 - 10:18pmPermalink

For jailbroken iphone, just install icleaner from cydia. It worked for me and saved 2 Gigs, reduce "other" to almost 0

Katie replied on June 13, 2013 - 5:18amPermalink

Oh man, this isn't English to me and I still have SOOO much space being taken from "other" on my iphone 4S. I've already gone in and cleared cookies and safari data, which gave me several of my GB back, but I still have 7GB used (of the original 13 it was taking up). How do I fix it, without whatever that says because I don't understand that language.

prateek athrav ... replied on March 27, 2014 - 11:52amPermalink

Thnks a lot i got relieved 19.8 gb of other to 2.68 gb ........
yahooo i got my memmory back again

Anonymous replied on September 8, 2012 - 10:56pmPermalink

ANOTHER THING TO CONSIDER
if you go thru your text messages and delete images and videos that have been sent over time then you can clear out a lot of that space too. I went thru all messages today, and notice I had text videos and photos to people (mostly family), so I deleted them and VOILA! 5.3 gb of Other was now .79 gb.

I feel so much better and hopefully my iphone will run better. ..

Ken replied on December 22, 2011 - 10:24pmPermalink

And if you're not using Safari?

Anonymous replied on April 28, 2012 - 11:53pmPermalink

That worked so well! so simple i would never have even thought that was the cause. i had 6.5 gb of other then cleared my safari history and such now only have .70 gb of other! thanks!:)

Little Liam Victoria replied on May 18, 2012 - 9:19pmPermalink

HotsieDAM !!! Worked like a charm _ After 4 frustrating weeks and lots of throwing out pics and apps this method did it . THANKS to the crowd on the web - !! No-one of us knows more than all of us!! THANKS AGAIN

Anonymous replied on April 29, 2012 - 12:19pmPermalink

I have 3 GB of other on my iPod touch. I tried this and restarted it but it didn't make a difference. I use Safari often, too! My iPod's really stunk lately!! No matter how much stuff I delete, it says my memory's full and I can't take pictures and such. I don't want to have to restore it, but I just need help! Thanks!

Anonymous replied on August 7, 2012 - 6:27amPermalink

Thanks: it worked!

Anonymous replied on August 17, 2012 - 11:01pmPermalink

awesome! thanks!!

Anonymous replied on December 6, 2012 - 7:01amPermalink

Wow! That zapped it from 7.8G of 'other' down to about 2.3G - doesn't get rid of it all, but thanks for such a simple solution.At least I should now be able to sync

Anonymous replied on February 10, 2013 - 3:37pmPermalink

i did and it did nothing any other solutions???

Nancy Parr replied on June 29, 2011 - 2:47pmPermalink

want to take all of itune off iphone do not liston to music on iphone

GUIDO replied on November 13, 2011 - 8:20pmPermalink

im my case: i had installed BIGU and download a dozen of movie showing in download lite apps.
So log in BIG U and go in my file folder and remove as many movies you feel to and you will free a lot of room.
let me know if works....

Raz replied on May 21, 2012 - 5:54amPermalink

I used DiskAid to access the iPhone and found out that in the Recordings folder i had about 1GB of voice memo duplicates. Some of them had 19 duplicates of the same recording. I saved them to my desktop and then i had deleted them all. The Other tab shrunk back to 0,58GB.

iris castro replied on August 17, 2012 - 8:36amPermalink

the other section of my iphone storage is 3.1 gb and the solutions i found here was with the use of diskaid, where can i get that?

Anonymous replied on August 13, 2012 - 11:13pmPermalink

OTHER is 90% text messages saved on your phone (so just delete them and you'll see most of this "other" vanish).
The other 8% of OTHER is your saved cookies so clear all that.
The last 2% of OTHER is normal so don't worry about that.

Anonymous replied on September 21, 2007 - 1:14pmPermalink

Could it be your internet cache/cookie/history?? Perhaps too many internet pictures? lol

SundayDuffer replied on September 22, 2007 - 6:48amPermalink

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

Anonymous replied on March 16, 2010 - 6:24amPermalink

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

Anonymous replied on July 4, 2010 - 8:55pmPermalink

I did that too and I got all my space back, thanks for the alternative to cleaning everything out!

[Bry] replied on September 24, 2007 - 6:36pmPermalink

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

Bwelton replied on May 29, 2008 - 4:25pmPermalink

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.

Anonymous replied on October 8, 2008 - 8:29amPermalink

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.

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

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