How To Clear Other Space On iPhone

How To Free Up Space On Your Phone

How to Delete Other Storage on Your iPhone

iPhones now offer more storage than ever, but without the option to add a microSD card, you can still feel as though its not quite enough.

While you can be careful with how many photos, videos, or music tracks you store on your device, the iPhones “Other” storage category remains something of a mystery.

Thankfully, there are a couple of options to clear this myriad of leftover files and caches. Heres how to do some spring cleaning.

Even with a top of the line iPhone, you may still find yourself running low on storage so why not free up some space by using a cloud storage provider like iDrive to store your photos, documents and other files.

How To View Your iPhone Storage

To see how much storage all your apps and data are taking up on your iPhones storage, open the Settings app, select General, then iPhone Storage. Up top youll see a bar graph showing your total iPhone storage and which types of data are filling it up. Beneath that youll find a list of applications on your phone and how much room they take up, both for the app itself and its stored data.

Youll find your iPhone storage details a few layers deep in the Settings app.

It may take several seconds for your iPhone to show the graph, as it takes time to scan and analyze its storage. Even after the chart first appears, youll want to wait several seconds more for it to stabilize, as the app list and storage sizes can change while your phone completes its analysis.

How To Automatically Offload Unused Apps

Offloading apps wont delete any cached data that youve accumulated while using the app, but it will delete a different type of Other Storage. When you install apps on your iPhone, some of the system files for the app get filed under Other. If you never use the app, then thats storage you arent getting back. You can set up your iPhone to offload apps that you arent using. This deletes the app, but not your passwords and other associated data, making reinstalling an offloaded app easier than a deleted app.

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Delete Attachments In Messages

Texting isnt just about text, right? Youre sending and receiving memes, GIFs, selfies, little videos of your cat falling off the couch in her sleep. All that content is stored on your iPhone even if you dont save it to Photos, and if you text a lot it quickly adds up.

Heres how to delete all your attachments in Messages to clear some iPhone memory:

Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.

Scroll down and tap on Messages.

Youll see a list: Top Conversations, Photos, GIFs and Stickers, and Other. Tap on the category that occupies the most space. Keep in mind that in Top Conversations, youll be deleting entire threads, not just the attachments. If you dont want to do that, stick to Photos and other content.

Tap Edit in the upper-right corner.

Tap the Trash icon.

Thats it! Space-hogging attachments are gone.

iPhone Other Storage How To Free Up Space On Your iPhone

How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone and Delete Other Storage on Your ...

1:16 pm By Roland Hutchinson

If you have ever wondered exactly what is taking up all the space on your iPhone, you can easily find this out from the settings menu on your device. One of the most asked questions about storage on your iPhone is what is Other Storage or as Apple now calls it in iOS 15, System Data.

This guide is designed to help you understand what is using up the iPhone other storage on your device and how you can remove some of it to free up space on your iPhone.

You may have a situation where you need some extra storage on your iPhone, you could be trying to download an update or install a new app and you do not have enough space.

In order to clear some space on your iPhone, you can delete some apps and files if you have already done this then another way to clear some space on your iPhone to look at is other storage.

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What Is Other Storage On The iPhone And How Can I Free It Up

You can see the Other section on your iPhone at the bottom of the apps list, there are two listings, one for iOS and one for System Data

iPhone other storage is basically storage that is used by a number of apps on your device, you can clear some of this storage on your iPhone and there are a number of ways this can be done.

Delete Photos And Videos You Sent Or Received From Others

If you dont have time to decide what to delete or back up to iCloud, and you just want a quick and easy way to start freeing up some space, head on back to Settings, tap on General, and click iPhone Storage. When youre there, click on Review Large Attachments, which is located below thecolor-coded bar that shows how much storage apps, photos, the system, and other settings are taking up. Here, youll see a list of photos and videos youve sent or received in messages, which you can delete by placing your thumb on one, swiping to the left, and clicking the red Delete button.

Prioritize getting rid of the first couple at the top, which will likely be videos, as those occupy the most amount of storage. In my experience, I have found that deleting these sometimes gives me just the bit more storage I need if Im on the go and dont have a lot of time to think through which apps, photos, or videos I really dont need anymore.

Once again, head to Settings and click on General. Image: Sheena Vasani
Then click on iPhone Storage. Image: Sheena Vasani
Image: Sheena Vasani

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Clearing Up Notification Center

1Open Notification Center. Once you’ve turned on and unlocked your iPhone, swipe down from the top. A bar should begin to be displayed as you swipe down. Try to grab the bar from the direct center of the bar with your finger.

2Look through all the days where there are notifications. Make sure you have perused through all of them to ensure you don’t lose important notifications. Up until iOS 10, there was a way to sort these By App , but in iOS 10, there is only a way to sort them chronologically by date and time the notification came in.

3Look for and tap the “x” button to the direct right of the date or app name .

4Tap the “clear” button once the x changes to display “clear”.

5Make some adjustments to your notifications if you no longer find certain apps no longer helpfully displaying notifications for you.

Open your Settings app and select “Notifications”.

Find the app that is no longer interesting to you and tap the name of it.

Look for the “Show in Notification Center” slider bar that should be greenish in color. If it’s another color , you can safely assume it is turned on .

Slide this slider to the left until the slider doesn’t produce a color on the slider bar.

However, it can also be turned completely off .

What’s Taking Up Space On My iPhone

How to Delete “Other” Storage on iPhone – Free Up Space

First, let’s find out exactly what is taking up space on your iPhone, and how much space you have left.

Pick up your iPhone, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.

You’ll see areas like Apps, Media, Photos and Other – as well as how much space they’re occupying on your iPhone. You can scroll down on your iPhone to find out how much space each individual app is taking up. Spoiler Alert: tap an app, then tap “Delete App” to get rid of it.

Read on to find out how to free up space on iPhone!

Clean Up Notes And Voice Memos

With both Notes and Voice Memos, the best thing to do is go through each of the apps and figure out whats worth saving and what should be deleted.

Something to keep in mind, though, is that deleted notes go to a Recently Deleted folder, so you want to clear that as well to reduce Other storage. Heres how:

Open Notes.

Swipe left on each note to delete it for good.

Backup And Reset Your iPhone

The way to erase all caches and temporary files is to backup your iPhone to your PC, Mac or iCloud account and wipe your iPhone. This will guarantee all temporary files and caches are deleted. After wiping your iPhone you can restore the backup through iTunes to recover your contacts, songs, pictures and apps.

Plug your iPhone to your computer, open it through iTunes and hit “Back Up Now” and wait until your iPhone syncs. Then, go to “Settings” > “General” > “Reset” > “Erase All Content” on your iPhone. Once the iPhone is wiped, plug it back into your computer. Open iTunes, choose the right backup data and hit “Restore Backup“.

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Clear Safari Site Data

One of the applications that contribute to your Other storage is Safari. All your browser history, data, and cache are stored on your phone, which can consume a reasonable amount of storage after some time.

Heres how you can clear Safaris website data:

First, tap the Settings app on your iPhone, and go to General.

Now, tap on iPhone Storage, scroll down to the app list, and click on Safari.

After that, access the Website Data tab.

Lastly, choose the Remove All Website Data option located at the bottom of the screen and tap Remove Now.

Once done, go back to your iPhones storage tab and see if the Other storage size was reduced.

Deleting Old And Junk Mail

How to Speed Up Your iPhone and Clear Storage Space totallee

1Open the Mail app. It’s a blue app with a white, sealed envelope icon.

If it doesn’t open on the “Mailboxes” screen, tap Mailboxes in the upper-left corner of the screen.

2Tap Trash. It’s next to a blue trash can icon.

3Tap Edit. It’s in the upper-right corner of the screen.

4Tap Delete All. It’s in the lower-right corner of the screen.

5Tap Delete All. All of the deleted emails from the Mail app, with all of their attachments, have now been deleted from your device.

6Tap Mailboxes. It’s in the upper-left corner of the screen.

7Tap . It’s next to a blue dumpster icon that contains an “x.”

8Tap Edit. It’s in the upper-right corner of the screen.

9Tap Delete All. It’s in the lower-right corner of the screen.

10Tap Delete All. All of the junk emails from the Mail app, with all of their attachments, have now been deleted from your device.

If you use an alternative mail client, such as the Gmail app, go through the processes specific to the app to remove deleted and junk emails.

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Add Site Links To Your Home Screen Instead Of Keeping Apps

Back in the day, when I had an ancient 32GB iPhone and constantly ran out of storage, I had no choice but to delete pretty much all of my apps. It made me realize there were a few I only used because they stored certain files I needed, like Google Drive.

It dawned on me that I could instead just add links to the files I needed to my home screen, so I could access them as if they were apps instead. In fact, it was even easier and faster to access those files this way, rather than constantly opening up and digging through Google Drive for them. I started adopting this approach to other apps, too, adding links to news sites instead of using news apps, for instance, which saved me some space.

So if theres information you can easily look up on the web or with a Google search, you may want to consider adopting this approach. Just use your Safari app to head to the site, go to the bottom of the screen and click on the square icon with an arrow inside, then click on the Add to Home Screen option located towards the bottom of the list. Tap on Add, and then you should be able to find it somewhere on your screen.

On the Safari app, click on the square icon with an arrow inside right at the center bottom. Image: Sheena Vasani
Image: Sheena Vasani
Then click on Add. Image: Sheena Vasani

Try Clearing Your Website Data And History

One way of easily clearing some of this storage on your device is to clear your website data and history, this can be done in Safari.

In order to clear website data and history, you need to go to Settings > Safari and scroll down to Clear History and Website Data.

Once this has been done you can check to see if this has had any impact on the amount that is used by the Other storage on your device.

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Clear Browser Cache And Offline Reading Lists

Now, when it comes to browsers, everyones got their opinions and preferences on which one to use. For the sake of this article, well go over the two most popular iPhone browsers, Safari and Chrome.

To clear the cache in Safari:

Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Safari.

Tap Website Data.

Tap Remove All Website Data.

While clearing your browser cache is a great starting point for cleaning up space, another area that shouldnt be overlooked with Safari is your Offline Reading List.

To remove items from your Reading List:

Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Safari.

Swipe left on Offline Reading List.

Tap Delete.

And then, if youre using Chrome, this is how you clear browser cache:

Open the Chrome app on your iPhone.

Tap the More Settings button in the bottom right corner.

Go to Settings > Privacy > Clear Browsing Data.

Choose from the list of data types you want to delete.

Tap Clear Browsing Data.

To clear out your Offline Reading List:

Open the Chrome app.

Tap the More Settings button in the bottom right corner.

Tap Reading Lists > Edit.

Select the articles you want to delete.

Tap Delete.

Thats it! Browsers tend to accumulate a lot of data, so this should already cause the Other category on your storage bar to shrink a little.

Fix : Factory Reset Your Device

How to Clear “Other” Storage on iPhone

Lastly, if nothing else seems to fix the large storage on iOS 15, you can factory reset your device. This will erase all the existing data and saved settings from your device and delete the other storage. You can go to your iPhoneâs Settings > General > Reset and select the âErase all Content and Settingsâ option. You would have to enter the passcode of your iPhone to confirm your choice as your device resets.

Get Rid Of Old Photos

Of course, you can go through all your photo albums and delete the ones you dont need, but all that tapping and deleting might keep you busy for days. To save time, tap on Settings, then iPhone Storage, and navigate to the app.You can delete the Recently Deleted Album using the Empty text button.

Also look at Review Personal Videos, which shows a list of the largest videos, which you may want to delete right away.

But pay attention! Carefully go through these lists. You dont want to get rid of something with sentimental value. Another option here is to upload photos to iCloud if you opt for Apples paid plan, it offers upwards of 50 GB storage instead of the free 5 GB. This allows you to free up local storage and to access your photos directly from the cloud.

Cut Down On Streaming If You Can

Streaming a lot of music and video is another potential reason why your iPhones Other storage is getting out of hand. To clarify, this is not the same as downloading.

When you download video or audio from the iTunes store, TV app, or Music app, it is categorized as Media. Streams, on the other hand, use caches to ensure seamless playback, and these are classified as Other.

So, while you try to free up some space on your iPhone or iPad, hold off on streaming, or reduce how much streaming content you consume. You can live off of downloads in the meantime.

You can also try to clear app caches from your iPhone storage. Target specific media apps that you use to stream online content, such as YouTube, Apple Music , Netflix, or Podcasts. Then clear the data for those apps in your storage settings.

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The Dreaded Storage Almost Full Message

It took only four months using my 64 GB iPhone before I got the dreaded storage warning. I had collected a lot of data. I had several video shoots on my phone, plus Id downloaded Spotify playlists and YouTube clips, and I had installed a few games. In this article, I’ll walk you through my process of cleaning my phone, top to bottom.

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Before you start cleaning, remember that removing junk files is only part of the process of ensuring a phone stays healthy and fast. Thats why we recommend installing our free Avast Mobile Security app to help protect your phone from unsecured Wi-Fi connections and password theft.

Get it forMac,PC,Android

Mail App Cache And Files

How to Clear iPhone Storage & Free Up Space!

Another application that stores a local cache on your device is the iOS Mail app. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to clear the cache and all associated files. Our recommendation for tackling this category is merely removing your email account from your iPhone and then re-adding it.

You can manage all current email accounts by opening the Settings app and navigating to the Passwords & Accounts section, then tapping the account and choosing to delete it. If you need further assistance after setting up your email again, check out our guide on adding your email account to an iPhone.

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