3 simple ways to clear up "other" memory on your iOS device

The truth of the 16GB iPhone and iPad is that they really don't have 16GB of usable space, it's more like 12GB. With storage at a premium and a whole wonderful world of apps just waiting at your finger tips you've probably found yourself looking at your iPhone memory information and quietly cursed the name of Other.

Yes "other" memory, the nonspecific space hog that greedily takes up memory on your phone without adding value to your life. Is there a simple way to reclaim those precious GB back from your phone without restoring it? Yes dear reader there is. Here's how.

Step One: Delete your browser caches

There's a good chance that you've never thought to clear your web browser cache on your iOS device. After months or years of heavy browsing there's a decent chunk of memory that's taken up in your Other section by all these forgotten webpages. Lets clean it out.

For Safari users simply go to Settings -> Safari and then click the "Clear History" and "Clear Cookies and Data" buttons.

If you use Chrome the process is a little more complicated. Open Chrome and then select the drop down menu, signified with the three horizontal lines. Then go down to the History button, and click Clear Browsing Data.

Step Two: Delete your old text messages

Whenever you send a text message with a picture that picture has to be stored somewhere. That somewhere is your Other memory. Sadly there is no easy way to mass delete text messages. We suggest plowing through and manually deleting conversations next time you sit down to a night of Netflix. It's easy to do as a secondary task, just make sure you don't accidentally delete an important conversation.

Step Three: Delete old voice recordings with iFunbox

iOS has a killer voice recorder, but if you hoard recordings they really start to eat up your memory. Normally you'd have to delete these voice memos one by one, but if you'd like to save yourself some time iFunbox is a great application for both Mac and Windows that will allow you to quickly delete all of them at once. Simply click on the Voice Memos tab, select the messages you'd like to get ride of, and delete them. I cleared up almost 2GB of space on my iOS device just by deleting old memos. If you sync with iTunes, however, you can upload these to your computer normally and delete them off your device with no need for a third-party application like iFunbox.