Over the past year or so I have noticed when syncing my iPhone with my PC that data labeled as “Other” was taking up quite a lot of space. I’m not talking about just a few megabytes, I’m talking almost 3 gigabytes! When your iPhone is only 16GB losing 3GB or more is definitely a lot and does not go unnoticed when your iPhone is filled with music, apps and photos. There are many different things that actually could cause your “Other” data to pile up. So in this guide we will go over different solutions to minimize or completely remove the “Other” data on your iPhone. These solutions should also work with your iPad, iPod or any other iOS device.
The Safari Fix
Safari’s temporary files and data are actually saved in the “Other” category. This is extremely easy to clear out. All you do is go into Settings, then scroll down to Safari. On that page click on the Clear History and Clear Cookies and Data buttons. This will clear out some of that “Other” data.
Clear out Text Messages
This again is another pretty simple fix. Do you have months or even years of text messages? Go ahead and clear them out! You can use a program like DiskAid to easily clear them out or you can just manually clear them on your iPhone as you normally would. After you are done doing this sync up your iPhone and see if that took the size of “Other” down.
The DiskAid Solution
DiskAid is a transfer tool for iPhone, iPad, and iPod. It is available for both PC and Mac platforms. It will allow you to see pretty much everything that is on your iPhone. Once you have DiskAid installed go ahead and plug in your iPhone and make sure you back it up. Now go ahead and open DiskAid. On the far left you will see a bunch of different icons. Click on File System, they may be a box that pops up that asks you if you know what you are doing. Just click ok because we know what we are doing here. Now click on Media, then iTunes_Control, then Music. You will see a bunch of folders (like in the photo below), go ahead a delete them all.
Now go ahead and open iTunes and sync your iPhone first without any music. Then sync it again with all of your playlists and music. You will notice the size of “Other” has dropped dramatically!
If you still see a large amount of data taking up “Other” then connect your iPhone again and backup all of your photos so you will be able to retrieve them from your PC. Now back in DiskAid go into the File System again and then click on Camera Roll. Do the same thing here, delete everything. The reason is because sometimes especially if you’ve had your iPhone for a while it will store old photos and vidoes in “phantom” folders for some reason.
If All Else Fails, Restore
If these solutions do not work for you, then you may need to just restore your iPhone. Luckily using the solutions above I did not have to restore my iPhone.
If you have any questions or know another solution to remove the “Other” data on an iPhone leave them in the comments below and we will make sure to add them to the guide!
It does help. Thank you so much. I don’t know why some people are saying it doesn’t work.
Now, it didn’t free up the whole 4.0GB of other but now it stands at 2.8GB which at least is something.
I deleted Photos from system in the DiskAid and now is 1.17GB 😀
thnx man, great tips 🙂
Android is good if you can deal with piracy, instability and viruses. Good luck
Mine to, tried everything except restoring since I don’t wont to loose my ios 6 jailbreak, tried semi restore, iCleaner, the other data was in music directory, now my iphone is with 760mb of other data with 40 apps in and jailbroken to, cydia ads a lot of data in…
DiskAid did work for me. You need to click on Media then iTunes_Control. If you have TV shows, they might be stored in CloudAssets, look for them there. A multi-billion dollar company can’t create a system to manage media files properly… what has humanity come to.
here is a video for that, remove other file from your iphone, and make it run faster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ILHNHJvJkA
Thank you so much. This really helped me out. I had 26GB of other data… after searching the web for tipps I ended here with your idea solving the issue. Thanks!
Thank you! This took my Other from 4GB down to 1GB. I am assuming this will work on my iPad too and will do that next!
Worked for me, thanks alot 🙂
Just deleted the music and pictures folder under Media and poof 5gb space recovered 🙂
Not a happy camper… Bought DiskAid (now iMazing), followed the directions on this article, and my “Other” went from about 2 gig to 10 gig, plus now I have no music on my phone despite two attempts to sync my music and playlists.
When I read, “Just click ok because we know what we are doing here” part of me said “right.” I wish I had listened to that part. Thanks for nothing.
It does help. Don’t uncheck the box that says: manually manage music and videos. Just uncheck the box that says: sync only checked songs and videos
It freed up 1.67GB for me. Not a lot but at least is something! 😀
Damn, it works! I had 30 GB trapped in “Other” and I knew it was orphaned music. I tried PhoneClean Pro and it cleaned about a gig. (Nice product, but not for this). I downloaded Imazing (once Diskaid) followed the steps above for the ITunes_Control/Music — and Other is now 700MB! Now restoring my “real” music.
iPhone 4s iOS 7.1.2: it did work for me :). I deleted the music folders then resynced the music. The “Other” data went down from 13 gb to 4.25 gb. However I still have around 4 gb of other data. How to clear this now?
This article is very long and involves many steps. I Read another
article about How to
Remove Music from iPhone. This article is great and much
easier than this one
Downloaded iMazing (prev Disc Aid) FREE version. Worked brilliantly. Almost removed all “other” didn’t lose any phots/music etc. Was a bit nervous lol but it was very easy. No need to buy the licence