Storage capacity, what is "other"?

If you have a jailbroken device, then any jailbreak apps and settings you have are stored in that portion labeled "other". That could explain why it is such a large capacity. There is other stuff stored there too, but I'm not sure what the rest of it is.

I've noticed this: If you have apps that download podcasts and stuff, Podcaster is my example, when I cleaned out the old podcasts the "other" went way down. Other apps may work the same way.

It's album art, app art and web clips you have saved on your homescreen

I use Zinio, and you can download full magazines through that app. These are fullscreen images of 100-page magazines, which means they take up tens or hundreds of megs. I'm pretty sure stuff like that is what "Other" is. When I discovered this, I was extremely glad I bought a 64 GB iPad 2 instead of 16.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Contacts, Calendars, Alarms, Settings, Call Log, Text Messages.

Other = p0rn

rgarjr said:

Other = p0rn

Click to expand...

lol damn thats why my others is taking up so much room

WildGuess said:

I've noticed this: If you have apps that download podcasts and stuff, Podcaster is my example, when I cleaned out the old podcasts the "other" went way down. Other apps may work the same way.

Click to expand...

All Apps work this way.

Whether the App is storing game saves, eBooks, Audio Files, Video Files, Documents etc. then it'll appear in the "Other" section.

Files are only put in the specified categories for things that iTunes syncs itself (like iBooks, Music from your iTunes library etc.)

Daveoc64 said:

All Apps work this way.

Whether the App is storing game saves, eBooks, Audio Files, Video Files, Documents etc. then it'll appear in the "Other" section.

Files are only put in the specified categories for things that iTunes syncs itself (like iBooks, Music from your iTunes library etc.)

Click to expand...

Spotify seems to store the audio within the app itself - that is unless 400 songs can be stored in 0.2GB of 'other'...

I guess I'll see if the 'app' storage or 'other' storage grow as I add more tracks.

Edit. Okay I've checked and Spotify stores the audio in the 'app' section as unticking Spotify in iTunes drops the 'app' storage from 4.8 to 2.1.

I had this issue for many months, but iOS 4.3 seemed to have finally fixed this issue (for me).

I tried several things to make the 'Other' go away, and the only way I've been able to clear "Other" is by:

-Plugging in my iPhone/iPad to iTunes
-Go to the Music tab and add a new album that is not yet on my phone
-Then wile its 'Syncing', wait until it gets to the part where its adding the new songs, then
-Yank/Pull the USB cable from the phone.
-Wait a few seconds for iTunes to recognize that your iPhone has been unplugged, then plug it back in. Now 'Other' should be cleared.



I can't guarantee that this will work, but I read this tip on the iPad forum a few months ago and it seems to work for me. I've read several theories from it being a Corrupted file to just a Caching error, several theories and a trip to the Genius Bar has yet to pin point what the actual issue is, but what I posted above seems to always do the trick for me.

Is there any way to see how much data an app like Zinio is using? I can't believe the 14mb reported on the iTunes sync screen is correct.

Brammy said:

Is there any way to see how much data an app like Zinio is using? I can't believe the 14mb reported on the iTunes sync screen is correct.

Click to expand...

I used an iPhone Extractor application (http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=4974), select the App you want info for and look at the file size.

I just did a test with rdio, I made a back-up of my phone with music stored on my device, then a second back-up with the music not stored on my device.

Brammy said:

Is there any way to see how much data an app like Zinio is using? I can't believe the 14mb reported on the iTunes sync screen is correct.

Click to expand...

With the phone connected to iTunes, untick the app (but don't apply) and it'll tell you how much space you'll have after it is removed - compare this to what you had before unticking.

TheOriginalKi said:

Spotify seems to store the audio within the app itself - that is unless 400 songs can be stored in 0.2GB of 'other'...

I guess I'll see if the 'app' storage or 'other' storage grow as I add more tracks.

Edit. Okay I've checked and Spotify stores the audio in the 'app' section as unticking Spotify in iTunes drops the 'app' storage from 4.8 to 2.1.

Click to expand...

Yes.

Looking at my usage it makes far more sense that the Apps would store things there.

I have 5.6GB in the Apps category, but the Apps themselves don't take up anywhere near that much.

I'm a bit puzzled by the 1.36GB of "Other" though.

+10

TheOriginalKi said:

With the phone connected to iTunes, untick the app (but don't apply) and it'll tell you how much space you'll have after it is removed - compare this to what you had before unticking.

Click to expand...

Good idea, simple idea, and it works. Thanks!