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what's up everyone welcome to apple
insider i'm andrew on twitter at andrew
underscore osu
and i'm annoyed i get this pop-up all
the time and i guarantee you
a bunch of you guys get like the same
pop-up this one
right there and honestly it's maddening
it is so frustrating to say that my ipad
storage
is full because i don't have that many
apps on here i don't have that much but
somehow my storage
is constantly full so in this video
we're going to look at how to check your
storage on your device
and we're going to specifically dive
into what apple calls the
other section that can often take up a
bunch of data
and cause you to get stupid messages
like this
saying you're out of storage uh on your
iphone or your ipad so we're gonna look
at what that data means
and how to get rid of it let's go ahead
and dive in
to today's video so first let's start
with i guess the basics
how to check how much storage you have
on your device and
where it is all going so on your iphone
or ipad you're going to go ahead and
jump
into the settings app where else you're
going to scroll down and tap on general
and then go down to iphone or ipad
storage so once you tap that it's going
to take a little while to load
especially depending on the size of your
device this is a 512 gigabyte iphone so
it might take a few minutes longer than
your ipad or your iphone that's rocking
32 or even 64 gigs
uh it's just kind of itemizing where
that storage is going what apps are
taking it up all of that
now something you know here it's going
to
load eventually but it still may not be
that accurate
let it load even longer if you're not
sure even just a few more minutes
because it can actually
keep going through like they put a bunch
of stuff into other and then they may
re-allocate that back to different apps
and such
as it kind of continues to index where
the storage is going so especially for
larger devices
it may take a little bit longer and you
may want to hold up a little bit
more just to make sure everything is
accurate so mine's already loaded
so again 512 gigabyte iphone i've used
345 gigs of that
but even right now it doesn't give me my
categories the top just tells me how
much so far that i've used
gives me some rough stuff down here but
my category is the top
not yet loaded now once it's loaded you
can see all the different categories
where my storage is going
but that last one that other category is
what i want to dive into
now it just kind of gives you that just
other it doesn't really spell it out for
you so what is
other storage well that can be a bunch
of different things it can be
series alternative voices uh keychain
data fonts
dictionaries uh tons of user logs and
caches
and that's really true if you stream a
lot of content
especially from third party apps they
could be storing that content on your
phone it could be
you know tv shows music anything like
that and they could be just caching that
stuff locally on your device
and not clearing it as they should be so
it doesn't really get allocated to a
certain spot
but it still is stored on your phone and
your iphone just doesn't really know
where to categorize that data
so it just sits there in that other
category and there are a few ways to
work
on getting that other category smaller
the first thing to try
to reducing that other category is to
restart your iphone
and then clear safari's cache safari can
build up quite a big
cache on its own so here you just go
into settings on your ios or your ipad
os device
go down to safari and then hit
clear history and website data and then
tap to confirm
that's going to go ahead and remove
quite a bit of stuff in our demo we
actually removed about a gig and a half
just by doing that on an iphone 11 pro
not my
iphone 12 pro here but we can clear that
cache from other apps as well including
third-party ones
so again we're gonna go back into
settings go to general and then go
to iphone or ipad storage we're going to
wait for this to load
once more and we scroll down the list we
can see all of the different apps that
are being used on my device
if we jump into any of those we can see
how much
data they are using now they may have
documents so i'm looking at the gopro
quick app
and i can actually see all of these
images and everything that are stored on
the device itself and i can swipe across
any of those and delete them
which can free up some space or if you
see an app that you really feel
shouldn't be taking about a space but
has a bunch of stuff cached on there you
always remove the app and then
re-download it to your device
that's kind of your brute force way of
making sure that cache is all
cleared out and just happens sometimes
but you can at least
see how much you know is going to the
app how much is going to the documents
and data
and if it makes sense to remove and
re-add that app now if you are deleting
anything
just be careful don't delete anything
that you think you might want if i'm
looking here my gopro quick app
i don't want to inadvertently delete a
piece of content that i had created that
i want to save
so while it does use almost 8 gigs of
data here
i'm not going to delete any of these
pictures or audios or anything like that
because i don't know exactly what they
are
but i have to remember that that could
be a big source of where my data is
going
to slim up space in general you can take
any of the cost cutting solutions that
apple offers
in that iphone storage pane so there'll
be these
recommendations here at the top it'll
let me offload unused apps so apps that
i've downloaded that i don't really use
that frequently i can save up to
97 gigs in my case by offloading those
clouds and re-downloading them
when i need them on the fly i can review
my tv downloads i've got a bunch of
stuff
saved here on my phone if i delete any
of those that'll save some space
and i can review large attachments so if
i'm looking at my
attachments on messages i can see some
really big files have been shared
they're stored here i mean this one
video here at the top is 1.16 gigs
so that would be another easy way to
free up just some storage in general
it's not other storage but just
storage in general speaking of just
slimming down storage in general
kind of overarching one other
possibility
is to offload your messages so if you go
to
messages you can go to keep messages for
and choose between forever a year and 30
days
by doing that you can free up a little
bit of space on your phone now that said
it doesn't do as much as it used to
so before i would only do it the shorter
amount it would clear up space on my
device but apple's been doing the
imessages in
icloud which does offload some of that
data to the cloud and not on your device
so for me i now keep mine on just keep
forever so i always have all my
histories and i can search through
things it's kind of handy
but if you are worried about space on
your phone that is something that can
help grip a little bit more space if you
drop that down to even 30 days
it's going to blow away more of that
data from
your phone or your ipad finally the
biggest way the way to get all possible
other space reclaimed on your iphone
or ipad this is not a fun way
by any means but this is the only way to
guarantee that you're going to get all
of the space
back on your device that you can and
what i had to do to my ipad
because that alert kept showing up and
i've tried everything else in this list
and nothing is getting that data back i
have nothing kind of taking up space and
yet i have a huge chunk of
other space i don't have siri voices on
there i don't have
i turned up like messages like i've
blown away so many things to try to get
that space back and i cannot do it so
the only
surefire way to do that is to back up
your device
whether to icloud or to your mac
reset your device erasing all content
and data
and then resetting up and restoring from
that backup
it will take some time to do especially
if you have a bigger device like
half a terabyte iphone but if you do
that
it will blow away everything in those
caches and then re-download everything
else so you're gonna have everything
that you need
and nothing that you don't it isn't fun
it isn't pretty but it is the only way
to guarantee you're gonna get the most
space back
so that pretty much covers it on how to
reclaim that other data
that keeps getting cashed on your iphone
or ipad
one other quick piece of advice if
you're an older device and you're maybe
rocking a version of ios 13
make sure you're updated to 13.6.1
apple says there was a bug affecting
prior versions in ios 13
that were causing bloat in that other
category of storage so it only applies
to those in ios 13 before 1361. but if
you were on one of those versions
be sure to update to that latest version
of ios specifically ios 13.6.1
or later and that should solve any
issues you have
with that other category expanding so
let me know what you guys think did this
help you at all reclaiming some storage
on your ios or ipad os device let me
know over on twitter at andrew
underscore osu and
stay tuned to apple insider for more
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