IOS – Freeing Space in iOS

iosiphonestorage

I know this has been asked a zillion times and there are many search results all over the web. However, I have never found any answer that actually fixes the problem.

So, to restate: I have an iPhone 5C (model 1532) with 8G (says 5 available). I'm running IOS 9.2.1. My storage says I have 0 bytes available, and I can't do anything that changes it. I've tried a reset (power+home). It says I have 180M in photos, however I did go delete a bunch and the number didn't change. I don't have iTunes, it's not connected to a PC, I don't have music or videos on it.

How can I free up space? How can I delete files (pictures, apps) and have the system acknowledge the change? This is seriously frustrating that I can't manage the space usage on the device.

Best Answer

For anyone else in this situation, I'm posting my experience. I did install iTunes and do a backup/restore, but that didn't fix it. It did help me see that, in fact, there was a huge chuck of data marked as "other" - this is what most forum posts describe. I began deleting apps to see if I could figure out which was responsible, but nothing reduced that wasted space. Finally, I was forced to accept the unpleasant reality. Yes, you have to wipe your phone. Since I had a backup, I went to Settings -> General -> Reset (at the bottom) -> Erase All Content and Settings. After, I used iTunes to do a restore. This brought back pretty much everything the way I had it. However, apps that I deleted I had to search and reinstall from the AppStore. (Why don't they have a "my apps" list like Amazon does?)

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