Part 1: How to magically clean out your “Other System Data” in iOS/iPadOS?

I’m sure this sounds familiar. You’re trying to download and install the latest iOS release or take some photos, or download that cool app your friend told you about, and your iPhone/iPad says the storage is full.

You’ve tried everything to clear space in your iPhone/iPad, from deleting apps and messages, to clearing Safari cache to clear your deleted photos. But your heroic effort is still not enough. Worse still, you notice that a significant chunk of your space is taken up by a mysterious “Other System Data”:

How do you clear this freaking “Other System Data”?

If you search around Google for how people solved this problem, you will notice a lot of advice (e.g. this MacWorld article) that requires you to invoke the nuclear option: Backup, Erase, Restore.

But this is quite an extreme option!

If you have installed lots of apps, wiping and restoring your iPhone will require you to re-download all your them again. Depending on your Internet plan, you may not have enough data to do so. Or your Internet connection may not be fast enough, which means it is going to take up a lot of your time. This nuclear option is not something you will want to take if you can help it.

What else can you do in order to clear that darn “Other System Data”?

A few years, there was this epic trick of clearing the “Other System Data” by attempting to download an iTunes movie. Unfortunately, this epic trick may not work anymore.

But rest assured! I’ve found another EPIC trick to do that. I have found a way to clear that very quickly and conveniently. In my case, my “Other System Data” fell from 9.4 GB to 3.2 GB! That’s a saving of more than 6 GB in one swoop!