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scubacat

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 10, 2011
75
2
The last few weeks I've been getting messages that my iPhone 8 storage is full. I've done everything possible, including offloading unused apps, deleting music and photos, clearing the Safari cache. Within a day of clearing out ~1GB, I would get the message again. I'm not sure what was taking up so much space as I'm not downloading large files, or taking large pictures or videos. Anyway, I noticed the "Other" category had somewhere between 20-40 GB stored in it (my phone only has 64 GB), and my understanding is that "Other" files are temporary files for apps but there is no way to clear that data manually. I ended up doing a restore from backup and now that I've restored everything, I'm only using 20 GB of 64 GB total. So what can I do to prevent getting so bogged down with "Other" files in the future? It's appalling that somewhere between 1/3-2/3 of my phone space was taken up with things that I couldn't delete.
 
You might want to try running this app a couple of times to release all the cache.

 
There has always been a lot of talk about the Other folder throughout the years. I’ve personally seen it fill up with my iCloud Photos that I’ve downloaded while having Optimize Photos turned on. For some who back up with iTunes, it’s waiting to do a backup.

iOS will release this storage when it is needed. I’ve seen it - I have 85GB of photos. With optimized photos on the other was 40+GB.

Your phone won’t get “bogged” down - it’ll free up the space as needed. I notice no performance difference between an empty phone and my (with no optimized storage) 200GB of storage used.
 
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