How to clear iPhone other storage? Here’s what you can do to get that Important Other to fill up all of your iPhone storage. Get to know more.
I’m sure this sounds familiar: You’re trying to install the latest version of iOS 15, back up and upgrade to a new iPhone, or download that cool app your friend told you about, and your iPhone indicates that the storage is full.
You have already deleted all the apps that you think you don’t need and there isn’t enough space yet. So open Settings, tap General, then tap iPhone Storage, and of course your iPhone is full. Worse still, much of it is simply listed as “Other.” What is that supposed to mean? How to get rid of it?
The Other Storage section is mysterious and confusing. And there is no one-size-fits-all answer, but I hope this guide helps you solve that problem.
What is The Other in iPhone Storage – How to View ?
What is the other category in iphone storage? To see how much storage all your apps and data are taking up on your iPhone storage.
Open the Settings, then select General, then iPhone Storage.
At the top, you’ll see a bar chart showing your iPhone’s total storage and the types of data that populate it.
Below you will find a list of applications on your phone and the space they occupy, both for the application itself and for its stored data.
It may take several seconds for your iPhone to display the graph as it takes time to scan and analyze your storage. Even after the graph first appears, you will have to wait a few more seconds for it to stabilize, as the list of applications and storage sizes may change as your phone completes the scan.
Why is Other Taking Up My Storage iPhone ?
Your iPhone’s storage menu will divide that bar at the top into familiar categories like Applications, Media, Photos, and Mail. But also another category that is sometimes very large. It’s common for Other to be in the 5-20GB range, but if it’s over 20GB it’s probably gotten out of hand. You can scroll to the bottom of the app list where you will see “iOS” and “System Data” listed. Tap “System Data” to see how much you need “Other System Data”.
The Others category is wide and varied, because it is a true general category. Includes system caches, logs, Siri voices (if you’ve downloaded other voices), updates, and more. One of the biggest culprits for Other’s uncontrollable growth is streaming a lot of music and videos. When you download a video or music from the iTunes Store, TV app, or Music app, it is index as the medium. But the streams have caches that are use to ensure smooth playback, and they are classified as Other.
Safari caches can also start to grow quite large. And if you send tons of texts with images or videos, the caches for that can start to fill up a lot of space.
Your iPhone is suppose to manage these caches to prevent your storage from filling up, but it doesn’t always do a great job.
In this blog, get to know how to clear iPhone other storage space.
How to Delete Extra Storage on Your iPhone ?
How to Clear iPhone Other Storage ?
You can’t get rid of Others completely, but sometimes you can make them smaller.
First, let’s try clearing your Safari caches. Open Settings> Safari and choose Clear History and Website Data. If you have a lot of Safari tabs open on your iPhone, you can close most of them too.
You can also edit the messages to save fewer old messages. Open Settings, then Messages, and scroll down to the message history settings. By default, Keep messages is set to Forever, but you may want to change it to 1 year or even 30 days to reduce the data cache by the Messages app.
Finally, go back to the iPhone storage and check the list of apps. Most applications store categorized data as applications, but some will keep categorized caches like others. If, for example, the Podcasts app takes up a few gigabytes of space, it’s probably cache data. Deleting the app and downloading it again may damage the Others category.
The Ultimate Option: Backup and Restore with iTunes
You can navigate your iPhone trying to remove every little cache that might increase the size of the other storage, but if you really want to make it as small as possible, you need to back up your phone and reset it. It may take a while.
The best way to do this is to use iTunes on your Mac or PC.
Connect your iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes. On a Mac with macOS Catalina or later, you will use Finder instead, but the process is the same. You may be asked to allow access on your iPhone and enter your password, which you need to do.
Select your iPhone by clicking the small phone icon in the upper left, and under Backups, choose This Computer. Checking Encrypt local backup is a good idea, so that your account passwords and health data are also back up. Just choose a password that you won’t forget. Click the Backup Now button.
Once the backup is complete, disconnect your iPhone and go to Settings > General > Reset and choose Erase all content and settings. This will return your iPhone to a ready-to-use state. When it restarts and you’re in the initial setup process, reconnect it to your computer with iTunes open and follow the onscreen instructions to restore your device.
This is the longest and most complicated way to reduce the size of Other Storage, but it is also the best; There is simply no way to make it smaller than it will be after a new reboot and restore. I think now you understood about how to clear iPhone other storage.