There’s a hidden portion of your iPhone that you might not be aware of called Other storage. It can be easy to forget about this portion, but it can also eat up a lot of space on your device if you don’t monitor it and clear it out regularly. Here’s what you need to know about the Other portion of your iPhone and how you can delete it safely and effectively when needed!
All That ‘Other’ Space on Your iPhone
Space on your phone comes at a premium. When you’ve got hundreds of gigabytes worth of music, movies, apps, contacts, and photos stored on your device—or even when you just want to make sure you can access the latest version of Pokémon Go—phone space becomes an invaluable commodity. But what if there’s this ‘other’ storage taking up a lot of space? What is it, how do I get rid of it? Let us tell you! Other storage refers to all the space that isn’t available for use.
For example, some storage might be occupied by iOS software updates or new files that haven’t been deleted yet because they are waiting for iTunes sync. It’s important to clear out as much Other storage as possible so you have more room for new content on your phone – not only will it be easier to manage your photo library but in some cases, Other data might take up more than 10% of your total memory. There are two ways to remove Other data from your phone: Automatic Clearing with iCloud Photo Library
Backing Up Your Phone & Setting Up As New
Dealing with ‘Other’ Space in iOS 12
iOS 12 has introduced new other storage category. When iCloud syncing space has run out, it will automatically use the other storage space. If you have been looking for a way to free up more of your device storage space, this is a great opportunity to delete data that’s not necessary anymore. Follow the steps below to clear up your other storage category!
1) Launch Settings from your home screen.
2) Tap on General -> Usage -> Device Storage.
3) Select the app that you would like to remove data from, tapping on the X at the upper-left corner of the app listing box if needed.
4) Swipe left over the app and tap on Delete App.
5) Tap OK when prompted with ‘Delete App?’ message.
6) After removing all unnecessary apps, go back to step two and repeat the process until there are no apps listed in your device storage usage list.
7) Once completed, return to settings menu and select Privacy followed by Cellular.
8) Turn off any options that might be using cellular data such as background app refresh or Apple Music.
9) Now head back to general settings and scroll down to find Date & Time.
10) Toggle off Set Automatically so your phone doesn’t set its time zone based on location or WiFi networks.
11) Next, turn off both Wi-Fi Assist and Bluetooth Assist by sliding them both off so they’re grayed out. 12) Finally, disable Background App Refresh.
13) Head back to main settings page and choose Wallpapers & Brightness > Choose Wallpaper.
14) Pick whichever wallpaper you want (doesn’t matter which one).
15) Press Done on the bottom right hand side.
16) Head into Settings > Battery > Battery Health (Beta).
17) Check Use Low Power Mode then hit Don’t Allow when prompted with a pop-up message asking whether or not to send Apple aggregated battery health statistics.
18 ) Hit Done on the bottom right hand side of your screen
19 ) Congratulations! You now have freed up some much needed space in your Other Category.
The Root of the Issue (AKA, Why This Matters)
Most of the storage on your phone is being taken up by unnecessary things like pictures of old relationships, unfinished podcasts, apps you never use. The Other category is just that—unnecessary items, taking up space on your phone and consuming your battery.
##Breaking It Down into Steps (seven sentences)]
One thing you can do to reclaim the Other storage space on your iPhone is to delete a bunch of unwanted apps at once.
In the new update for iOS 11, Apple has introduced a way to manually delete apps from all devices as opposed to having to go through each device one by one. To access this feature, tap Settings > General > iPhone Storage. On this screen, tap any app icon to see its size and how much space it’s using.
Tap the X button in the upper-left corner of an app’s thumbnail image to delete it. Once you have deleted enough apps so that your other storage capacity drops below 50%, there will be a blue bar at the top of this screen saying Your other storage capacity is below 50%.
Apps need more than 10% free space to work properly. If your free space goes below 10%, some features may slow down or stop working altogether. Now would be a good time to clean out some more unneeded files and photos!
Fixing iDevices’ Excessive ‘Other’ Space
The other storage often comes from a temporary folder for apps which are in the process of being downloaded. This can be deleted by turning on iCloud backup for your device, then restoring the backup to your device.
Other things that can contribute to other storage include large media files (especially videos), large email attachments, and the operating system’s cache. Resetting an iOS device clears all of these files at once. Finally, some files cannot be permanently deleted without disabling iCloud backups (e.g., call logs).
Deleting Apps to Reduce ‘Other’ Space
Apps are a powerful, fun way to use your phone – but that convenience can come at a cost. If you’re running out of space on your phone, the quickest way to free up storage space is to delete old apps. As time goes on, our phones’ hard drives fill up with all sorts of images, videos, apps and songs. When this happens and there’s no more space left for new content, most users experience what’s called other storage. Other storage means you’ve exceeded the amount of memory allocated to store things like app caches or downloaded music or TV shows.
On an iPhone, it takes up about 3GB of space by default (though it varies depending on device). And while deleting apps will help reduce your other storage, there are other ways to reduce the space too. For example, deleting emails or photos from within individual mailboxes (instead of deleting them in bulk) could save some additional space. Or backing up your device through iTunes first before deleting anything may be helpful too if you have a large number of apps installed. Whatever you do though, make sure to backup any important data before taking any actions!
Moving Old Files to Apple iCloud Drive
The next thing you can do to free up space on your iPhone is to move old files that are sitting around on your phone to Apple iCloud Drive. While these files may not seem like much, they all add up and occupy a ton of storage. If you’re looking for an easy way to find these types of old files, try a quick search with Siri. Say find large PDFs on my phone or find large MP3s on my phone, for example, and the results will show up in no time.
Hit the blue arrow next to each file name in order to download them from your phone onto iCloud Drive, where they’ll be safe until you need them again. Keep in mind that if you delete these files from your iPhone, you won’t be able to access them anymore unless they’re backed up on iCloud Drive. Once they’re moved over to iCloud Drive, though, you’ll have plenty of room on your iPhone’s storage! To learn more about what other ways you can clear up space on your iPhone, read the post here.
If you want to back up all your photos using iCloud Drive but don’t see an option, head into Settings and then Photos & Camera to make sure Photo Library is turned on. If it’s not enabled yet, turn Photo Library off and back on again so that all photos are uploaded automatically when you connect your iPhone or iPad to a power source.