How to Delete ‘Others’ from Storage on iPhone

Are you running out of space on your iPhone or iPad and wondering how and if you can delete something from the ‘other’ section in the storage? This is the answer.

One of the most precious assets of your iPhone or iPad is storage and it can be very stressful when it starts to fill up, especially if you are already limited to 64GB or even less space.

Checking what you are using all that space can reveal a strange category called ‘Other’ that often represents many gigabytes of data. So what is ‘Other’ on your iPhone or iPad, and can you delete it?

Note: It appears that iOS 13.6 could be causing Others to take up more than your memory quota. Although Apple did not mention this bug in the notes accompanying the iOS 13.6.1 release, the company has published a support document detailing the problem stating that: “A problem on iOS or iPadOS 13 could prevent the system from releasing storage for You. To fix this issue, update your iPhone or iPad to iOS or iPadOS 13.6.1 “. Apple points out that if you don’t have enough storage to perform the update, you can do it through your computer (in the case of a Mac, you can download the update through the Finder).

What is taking up the iPhone storage?

For starters, you’ll want to know how to see what your iPhone or iPad storage is taking up.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Touch iPhone [or iPad] Storage.
4. Wait for the category sizes to be calculated.

You will come across a graph like this. Look at everything in the “Other” category!

What is “Other”?

Look at the line chart showing the breakdown of your storage categories, and you’ll see the various color-coded sections, including one marked Other. iOS and iPadOS break down storage into various categories including Media, Photos, Applications, System, and a few more.

What does not easily fit into these categories is marked Other. Usually these are things like cache files, updates, logs, additional Siri voices that you’ve downloaded, plus equally ambiguous files.

You may also find that if you send a lot of text messages with images or streaming video content, your iPhone will create cache files so that it can handle all of this smoothly.

They should be automatically deleted after use, but sometimes they linger and end up in the Others section, unnecessarily taking up a considerable amount of space.

Can I remove the Others storage?

Due to its indistinct state, you cannot touch a button and empty the Others folder, but it is possible to make it occupy a little less. As with any destructive act when it comes to data, we strongly recommend that you first make a full backup of your iPhone or iPad in case something goes wrong.

How can I remove the storage of other data?

There are several things you can take into account when reducing the space that Other files occupy on your device. Next, we will look at some of the options.

Clear app caches

The most obvious thing is to look for applications that may be hogging caches. To check this, do the following:

1. Open the settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Touch iPhone [or iPad] Storage.
4. Now scroll down through the various applications that appear below the storage graph and you will see a list of applications and the amount of storage they are currently using.

Select one of them and you will be given a more detailed breakdown. It is not a forensic diagnosis, as it only has the size of the application and the documents and data, but if the latter seems excessively high, then you could try to go to the application itself and delete items.

If this does not change things, another option is to delete the application itself and reinstall it, as this usually clears all the data stored in the cache. Naturally, you will have to make sure that you have backup copies of any important data before attempting this route. For more information, see How to delete apps on iPhone and iPad.

Clear Safari cache

Another good idea is to empty the caches stored in Safari, as they can take up a lot of space. To do this, take the following steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Safari.
3. Tap Clear history and website data.

This has a drawback, as sites you have previously visited with temporarily take longer to load and require you to log in again, but this should only be the first time you visit them after clearing the cache.

Limit the storage time of messages

Messages are a common culprit in the Other Realm, so you should consider limiting the number of conversations and messages you store on your device. Apple offers time-related options for you to choose from, so if you don’t need the conversations from a year or two ago, it may be worth getting rid of them.

1. Open Settings.
2. Touch Messages.
3. In Message history, tap Save messages.

You will now be presented with three options for how long your device will store past conversations. These are 30 days, 1 year, or forever. By default, Forever will be selected, so change this to a shorter duration if you like to see those messages disappear. But don’t worry, you can save them to iCloud if you have it configured correctly. So before you start this process, read how to backup messages to iCloud.