Why does my iPhone use so much "other" space after upgrade to iOS 5?
After upgrading my iPhone, there is about 10 gigabytes assigned to Other that I don't remember seeing before.
What could be causing this space to be filled?
Solution 1:
It may be leftover data from a failed upgrade/sync. I noticed the same thing on my iPad, which then disappeared once I re-synced it.
Solution 2:
I installed the iExplorer, then went to iTunes_Controls Music folder and cleaned it all including subfolders. My "other" went from 2.9 GB to ZERO... before that I tried to clean Safari cache, clean trash folders in my emails, etc, and nothing worked.
Solution 3:
Here's what worked for me: I used PhoneView on my mac (not sure if there's an equivalent app for Windows) to archive and delete:
- Old (text) messages. All those videos take up a lot of space
- Old Voicemails
I deleted all of my voice recordings on the iPhone, then went into iTunes on my computer where they were saved, and went through and deleted all of the duplicates (2-5 duplicates per recording!)
Nothing else worked for me, including doing a restore. I went from >5GB of "other" stuff to 1.2 GB (Mostly voice memos)
Solution 4:
My ex-wife's other space was 6 GB, and she couldn't hardly do anything. It became apparent that her gmail account was the culprit - lots of big media files.
I reclaimed space in her gmail account by running it through findbigmail.com. It's a web app that places all the big gmail files in three folders varying by size. This takes them away from the inbox and frees up the space that the iPhone uses for gmail.
Findbigmail.com is a wonderful service, and I recommend them whole-heartedly. They removed the big attachements in her email in a few minutes. They say on their site they don't read the emails at all or scan them, so I felt safer.
It was then solved by erasing the iPhone after a backup. To be clear, you must specify the erase all content-and-settings to remove all the bloat.
Then a quick restore brought up a fresh iPhone with 6 GB more of space, and she's happier!