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miamialley

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 28, 2008
3,604
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California, USA
When I plug my iPad into iTunes, it shows that I have 2.4 GB of "other" data on my iPad. I can't imagine what this could possibly be. That's quite a bit of space...any ideas?
 

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The "other" space is mostly application data.
I have a lot of games on my 32GB iPad 2 and sometimes I have up to 8GB of "other" data. The application data in my case is the game saves. I also have an app that hides files and images behind a password protected GUI when the app opens. All the files that I have in that app would show up as "other" in iTunes because iTunes only recognizes music, videos, photos, books, and apps. Anything else goes under "other".

From my research, sometimes you can reduce the "other" portion by syncing your iPad with iTunes, then under the summary tab, click the check box for "open iTunes when this iPad is connected". Then sync your iPad again, and finally re-check that same box and sync the iPad for a third time.

Let me know what your experiences are after you try this or if you have any more questions.

Sorry if I rambled and that I don't have links to articles to better show you.

Good luck
 
The "other" space is mostly application data.
I have a lot of games on my 32GB iPad 2 and sometimes I have up to 8GB of "other" data. The application data in my case is the game saves. I also have an app that hides files and images behind a password protected GUI when the app opens. All the files that I have in that app would show up as "other" in iTunes because iTunes only recognizes music, videos, photos, books, and apps. Anything else goes under "other".

From my research, sometimes you can reduce the "other" portion by syncing your iPad with iTunes, then under the summary tab, click the check box for "open iTunes when this iPad is connected". Then sync your iPad again, and finally re-check that same box and sync the iPad for a third time.

Let me know what your experiences are after you try this or if you have any more questions.

Sorry if I rambled and that I don't have links to articles to better show you.

Good luck

Well, I don't have many games, particularly games that would have a lot of stored data (Words with Friends, World of Goo, Feed Me Oil). I have a lot of files in GoodReader, but that should be listed in the App section, according to my understanding (GoodReader shows as 192MB on my iPad).

My iPad is jailbroken, but I really don't have many Cydia things except for some tweaks, no themes at all.)

I really don't understanding how causing the iPad to sync when connected would affect anything though.
 
Use iFile or iFunBox and go to var/mobile/media/iTunes_Control and see if there's any extra crap there. At some point I had like 2 gigs of extra files (podcasts and videos etc) that I 'deleted' a while ago, but didn't actually get removed for some reason.

When I removed them, my 'Other' category shrunk to less than a gig.
 
Use iFile or iFunBox and go to var/mobile/media/iTunes_Control and see if there's any extra crap there. At some point I had like 2 gigs of extra files (podcasts and videos etc) that I 'deleted' a while ago, but didn't actually get removed for some reason.

When I removed them, my 'Other' category shrunk to less than a gig.

As I'm looking, I don't see too much going on in those folders.

I did take of the Family Feud app, which took off 0.2 G of the "other" data. I'm going to keep trying...
 
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When I plug my iPad into iTunes, it shows that I have 2.4 GB of "other" data on my iPad. I can't imagine what this could possibly be. That's quite a bit of space...any ideas?

bump just had this problem went to settings then general then usage and it breaks up where all your data is. Looks like when I was streaming 5 movies they all downloaded and thats why my 32gb iPad air was full with next to nothing on it
 
Using iTunes Match and iTunes Radio will also make the other space increase. Anything you listen to on both is placed in a cache file. Turning off iTunes Match is supposed to get rid of some of that space but I have not had that happen.

When other space gets too big, I just do a restore until it comes back again and it will.
 
This is a big problem that drives lots of people nuts.

Found out that for some people, it is taken up with old text messages, especially those with videos and pictures. Some have been deleted, some have not.
 
Who knows what that is... But it's something cuz I found out when my phones low on space I can backup to icloud wipe my phone clean put every thing back and gain at least a gig
 
It's also cache items, such as Spotify or Amazon Cloud Player that download recently played songs.

It is basically data that iTunes can not explicitly get to, it's outside of iTunes control.

I have had to do a restore a couple times because I download too many tracks from Amazon Cloud Player. Once I realized the app provides no way to delete the downloaded songs and iTunes can't do anything about it, I stopped using that "feature".
 
It's also cache items, such as Spotify or Amazon Cloud Player that download recently played songs.

It is basically data that iTunes can not explicitly get to, it's outside of iTunes control.

I have had to do a restore a couple times because I download too many tracks from Amazon Cloud Player. Once I realized the app provides no way to delete the downloaded songs and iTunes can't do anything about it, I stopped using that "feature".

Itunes Match and iTunes radio do the same thing. I liked being able to have all my music with me using iTunes Match but the other space just gets out of control.

I finally decided to just buy a 128GB Mini so that I can keep all my music with me. I never had a problem with the other space when storing music actually on the iPad. Just gotta quit using iTunes radio now.
 
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