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What is taking up "Other" space on my iPhone?
I haven't really cared much about the free space on my iPhone until it hit 0 bytes today and my phone gave me warning. The quickest thing for me to do was to delete a large game but when I connected to my computer, I noticed that a "Other" bar was consuming 2.5 GB of my iPhone's 13.57 GB. Does anyone know what is stored in this "Other" section? I don't think it's the OS and it definitely isn't temporary data in Safari. I've emptied the trash folder in my email and cleared all data from Safari yet it remains at 2.5 GB.
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JasonTsay's pick
This is actually sort of a mystery. I had the same issue on my iPad a while back. Some say it's data that syncs with your calendar, contacts, etc. and others say its history, cookies, and cache data from Safari. SMS/MMS message I think also go into "other." You might try clearing all this and then restart your phone. In the end, it could be a number of things, which is why it's a mystery.
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JasonTsay's pick
I had this problem at one point on my iPad. I believe one of my apps - a pdf reader - was failing to clear app-optimized rendering of pages of .pdf files. I stopped using the app and have not had a problem since. I have heard that there are other apps that spew junk data like this.
There are, however, some legitimate things that are categorized as "Other" - MMS and SMS as mentioned earlier, cover art from music files (you may have some that are ridiculously large res), and temporary internet files & cached data. You can purge caches from apps in the "Settings" for most apps.
While I was using the app, I found that I could clear the "other" data by using the Restore function. It took a lot of time to restore the iPad, but afterwards the "Other" data (which at one point took up more than 4GB) would be a much more reasonable .3GB.
There are, however, some legitimate things that are categorized as "Other" - MMS and SMS as mentioned earlier, cover art from music files (you may have some that are ridiculously large res), and temporary internet files & cached data. You can purge caches from apps in the "Settings" for most apps.
While I was using the app, I found that I could clear the "other" data by using the Restore function. It took a lot of time to restore the iPad, but afterwards the "Other" data (which at one point took up more than 4GB) would be a much more reasonable .3GB.
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Also if you have a jailbroken device and forgot about files you placed on your device somewhere. They will most likely be listed as "other." Hope you find out what it is. Good luck!
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Well it includes everything other than your apps, music and videos. Like the books you have downloaded, the dictionary in your iBooks, Downloaded stuff by your programs, image cache b programs.......
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Just found out how to remedy this issue without jailbreaking. There's a program called TouchCopy that allows you to access the filesystem of your iDevice. I dug around a bit and found a folder called "ApplicationArchive" which contained Gangstar Rio and Modern Combat 3 (each of these apps are about 1.7 GB). After deleting these files (it didn't delete the app), I recovered several gigabytes of space. My guess is that it was some temporary cache that I was unable to clear by hard resetting.
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