How to clear other storage on iPhone

Rate this post

Checking your iPhone’s storage can be shocking to see how much space is occupied by what’s called “others.” You may be wondering how to remove this unnamed resident and free up valuable storage. Please tell me what it is, how to check its total size and clear other storage on iPhone.

What is “Other” on the iPhone?

Storage pages have several categories such as apps, media, email, photos, and messages. Anything that does not fit into these predefined categories may be classified as “Other”. In iOS 15, it seems that the name has been changed System data..

Others have been renamed to system data in iOS 15

Apple states that “others” include “non-removable mobile assets.” This includes Siri voice, dictionaries, offline translation languages, fonts, dictionaries, Spotlight indexes, local keychain data, CloudKit databases, logs and caches, and more.

The cache includes streaming songs, video data, Safari cache, and more. All of these are reflected in the system storage as “Other”.

How to check “Other” storage on iPhone

  1. Open iPhone Setting Tap General..
  2. Tap iPhone storage..
  3. Wait a few seconds and you will see a detailed bar chart.Here you can see the share of the occupied space Other Or System data..

    How to check

How to use your computer to check “Other” iPhone data

  1. Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC and trust when asked.
  2. For Mac running macOS Catalina or later finder.. On a Mac running macOS Mojave or earlier or a Windows PC iTunes..
  3. Go to yours iPhone overview screen..
  4. Hover your mouse pointer over the storage bar to see the space occupied by’.Other.. “

    How to use your computer to check

How to delete “Other” on iPhone to free up space

iOS automatically manages other data accordingly. Also, you can’t completely free up “other” space unless you completely renew your iPhone after a full restore. However, you can reduce the size by erasing Safari data, deleting old messages, stickers, images, and deleting the app’s cache. I will introduce these methods.

  1. Clear Safari history and data
  2. Clear the app cache of other apps
  3. Delete attachments for large messages
  4. Update iPhone
  5. Backup, erase, restore

1. Clear Safari history and data

The first answer to delete other storage on iPhone is to erase Safari history and data. This ensures that all caches, temporary files, logs, etc. are deleted from your browser. Note that this will log you out of the website you are logged in to. It also closes all open tabs.

  1. Open iPhone Setting, Scroll down and tap Safari..
  2. Tap Clear history and website data..

    Clear Safari history and data on iPhone

2. Clear the app cache of other apps

The most efficient way to clear your app’s cache is to delete and reinstall your app. For example, if you delete the Spotify app and get it again, you will lose all temporary music streams (cache). However, the drawback is that the download is also erased. Therefore, removing the app will have a negative effect. However, if you want, you can do this with less relevant apps like Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, etc. to clear your app’s cache and free up a lot of space.

Another useful solution is to offload the app. This will delete the actual app, but retain all primary app data (except the app cache). Here you can learn how to offload the app.

In addition, some apps, such as Slack, carefully provide internal solutions for clearing the cache. Find it and use it to clear other system data on your iPhone.

Clear the Slack app cache

It is convenient to manually open a video streaming app such as Apple TV +, Prime Video, Netflix and delete the downloaded file.

Finally, make it a habit to restart your iPhone every 3-7 days. This ensures that temporary files are deleted and improves the user experience.

3. Delete large message attachments

Follow the steps below to find and delete large files you no longer need that you received in iMessage. This helps to remove “Other” on iPhone.

  1. Open SettingGeneraliPhone storage..
  2. From the list of apps, tap message..
  3. Tap one by one Photo, video, GIFs and stickers, Etc., display them.
  4. Tap Edit, Select the one you don’t need and delete it.

    Delete attachments for large messages

Professional tips: To optimize your local storage, you can also set your iPhone to automatically delete old messages after a month or a year.

4. Update iPhone

Okay. Updating to the latest version of iOS is one sure answer to how to remove other storage on your iPhone. At the time, due to some bugs, users were experiencing huge chunks of their space being eaten up by “others.” Apple didn’t shed any more light, but acknowledged it as a “problem” and recommended updating to iOS 13.6.1 or later.

Therefore, be sure to update your iPhone to remove “Other” and keep your system clean on your iPhone. If you have limited free space and cannot update directly from your device, use your computer.

5. Backup, erase, and restore

This is the ultimate and most effective solution for removing other storage on iPhone. Therefore, if you are currently looking for free space, you can follow this route.

However, after setting up your iPhone, we recommend using Siri to download Siri audio. Setting keychains, dictations, etc. will increase the size of the system data. However, if Other occupies a few GB for the time being, you can free up this space by erasing the device.

If you want to erase your iPhone, be sure to back it up to iCloud. You can then erase the device and then restore the backup.

Again, restoring a backup will show all apps and data, but it can take some time. In addition, if you are not familiar with the technology, we recommend that you skip this step. Restart your smartphone every 3-7 days, make sure you are always using the latest version of iOS, and regularly clear unnecessary apps, images, videos, voice memos, etc. According to these, “other” data. Your iPhone will handle it automatically.

We hope this brief guide will help you understand what the “other” of iPhone is, how to see how much space your iPhone is using, and how to get rid of it. If you need help freeing up more local storage, there is a dedicated guide on how to free up space on your iPhone and iPad.

You may also like to read: