How To Clean Others In Phone Storage

Have you ever wondered what’s using up so much space on your iPhone? Maybe you tried to download an app or a movie only to get the warning that you’re almost out of storage.

Because no one likes to be forced to delete apps or deal with photo storage, let's look at a few ways you can reclaim some space on your iPhone without taking such drastic measures. Two Apple experts explain what “Other” is in iPhone storage and show you how to remove it. “Other” can be a lot of things, but it’s usually cached photo, mus. Part 2: How to Clear Phone Storage for. For Android users you can go through each app clearing out the cache and data and then clean out other junk.

Or perhaps you just found your way through the Settings app and are now giving your storage a more in-depth look. While categories like Music and Photos are reasonably self-explanatory, there’s one category that’s a little harder to decipher, and that’s because it’s simply marked “Other.”

Keep reading, and we’ll go over what that actually means as well as how to clear Other on your iPhone.

What does Other mean in iPhone Storage?

Let’s start by figuring out all the things we know Other isn’t. We know it’s not the following categories, because these are already labeled in Settings > General > iPhone Storage:

Messages
Apps
Media (Music, TV Shows, Movies)
Photos

That means Other is the rest of the files you have on your iPhone that are not photos, videos, apps, or messages. This leaves us with the following things that fall under the Other category in iPhone Storage:

Mail attachments
Browser cache
Offline Reading List
Notes
Voice Memos
App data

How to clear Other on iPhone

Now that you understand what type of files are labeled as “other,” you can figure out the best way to clean them up and free up some space. As always, before you go and delete things en masse from your iPhone, make sure you back it up, in case you need to retrieve anything you’ve mistakenly deleted.

So here’s how you can get rid of Other data on iPhone, or at least reduce it:

Delete Mail attachments
Clear browsing cache and offline reading lists
Clean up Notes and Voice Memos
Delete app data

If you’re looking to free up iPhone storage, a quick way to do that is to clean up your Photos library. An app like Gemini Photos will scan it for similar pictures, old screenshots, and other clutter that’s taking up space.

Download on the App Store

Delete Mail attachments

There’s no easy, one-button solution for this. You can either painstakingly delete attachments one by one, or use the following workaround:

Go to Settings > Password & Accounts.
Tap on the account itself.
Then tap Delete Account.
Once the account is deleted, go ahead and re-add it.

By deleting and re-adding the account, you’re deleting all the local files from your emails and only downloading the most current emails.

Clear browser cache and offline reading lists

Now, when it comes to browsers, everyone’s got their opinions and preferences on which one to use. For the sake of this article, we’ll 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 shouldn’t 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 you’re 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.

That’s 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.

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 what’s 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. Here’s how:

Open Notes.
Swipe left to reveal folders.
Tap Recently Deleted.
Swipe left on each note to delete it for good.

Delete app data

If you’ve noticed how many apps are taking up quite a bit of storage, then it might be worth trying to clear their Documents & Data. Unfortunately, most apps don’t offer a straightforward way to do that, so you’ll have to use a workaround here as well:

Go to Settings > iPhone Storage.
Tap on the app name.
Then, tape Delete.
Re-download the app.

This will clear the data this app has accumulated. Just keep in mind you might be logged out of your accounts, so double-check to see if you have logins and passwords at hand.

Hopefully following these steps will help you free up some space occupied by useless Other data and generally clean up your iPhone. And now that you have an idea of what type of files are considered “other,” you’ll know exactly where to start looking to clean things up!

You can clear an iCloud account's storage in several ways to free up space and avoid having to pay for extra storage.
Apple gives you 5 GB of iCloud storage with the purchase of one of its devices, and that can fill up fast.
Most often, your iCloud storage goes towards backing up your photos, files, voice memos, apps, and text messages.

Unless you pay for an iCloud subscription, Apple gives you 5GB of storage with any device's purchase. That's not a lot of space, and you can quickly find that you don't have enough room for your photos, iCloud Drive files, and other data from your phone or tablet.

You can upgrade your iCloud subscription, but it's cheaper to clear out space in your iCloud account. You can delete files, photos, app backups, voice memos, and more from your iCloud Drive directly on your Apple device or through the iCloud website.

Typically, these things and all their associated data get backed up to iCloud by default. This can be both a blessing and a curse, particularly if the things you want to be backed up take up a lot of storage space. But you can save a substantial amount of space by disabling automatic backups, especially when it comes to your largest apps.

You can also delete text messages and any of the videos or images attached to them. While deleting individual texts won't save much space, you can remove entire conversations and the media associated with them, which can help significantly.

Here's how to clear your iCloud storage and free up more space.

How to clear iCloud storage

Delete photos from iCloud storage

By default, iCloud backs up all your photos and videos to the cloud. Over time, that adds up to a lot of pictures. You can save space by deleting any images you no longer want. It's possible to do this from your iPhone, iPad, or the iCloud website. As long as Google Photos is enabled, any pictures you delete in one location are automatically deleted everywhere. Here's how to delete photos from iCloud.

Delete files and folders from the iCloud website

1. Open iCloud.com in a browser.

2. Log in with your Apple ID.

3. Click 'iCloud Drive.'

4. To delete a folder, select it and then click the Delete icon.

5. To delete files, double-click a folder.

6. Hold down CTRL while clicking each file.

7. Select the Delete icon.

Delete unwanted files in iCloud Drive from your iPad or iPhone

1. On your iPhone or iPad, launch the Files app.

2. Tap 'Browse' at the bottom of the screen.

3. In the Locations section, select 'iCloud Drive.'

4. To delete an entire folder, tap 'Select' in the screen's top right.

5. Then, choose the folder and tap the Delete icon.

6. To delete files, open the folder they're contained in.

7. Use 'Select' to choose files and delete them.

Delete app backups from iCloud on your iPhone or iPad

1. Start the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.

2. Tap your account name at the top of the screen.

3. Select 'iCloud.'

4. Choose 'Manage Storage' on the next screen.

5. Tap 'Backups.'

6. A list of your Apple devices being backed up to iCloud will appear. Select the name of the device you are currently using.

7. In the Choose Data to Back Up section, you should now see a list of the five apps that take up the most space on iCloud.

8. Turn off the backup feature for any of these apps by swiping the button to the left.

9. To see more options and disable more apps by tapping 'Show All Apps.'

10. Repeat this process for any of your other Apple devices from that respective device.

Delete voice memos from iCloud on your iPhone or iPad

1. Start the Voice Memos app on your iPad or iPhone

2. Swipe a voice memo to the left.

3. Tap the Delete icon.

4. Select 'Recently Deleted.'

5. Tap the recording you just deleted.

6. Choose 'Delete' to permanently remove the voice memo, which will be erased on its own after 30 days.

Delete text messages and their large attachments on an iPhone or iPad

1. On your iPhone or iPad, start the Messages app.

2. Locate a conversation that has attachments you want to remove.

3. Select the person's name at the top of the screen.

4. Choose 'Info.'

5. On the Details page, photos should appear in a grid. Scroll and tap the 'See All Photos' link below them.