How to Remove Other Storage Space from PS5

How do you remove Other storage space from PS5? If you've just got your spangly new PlayStation 5 and started installing games on your SSD, you may be bemused by the appearance of the Other files eating into your SSD's available storage space. What is Other storage space and how do you get rid of it? As part of our PS5 guide, we're going to reveal how to remove Other storage space from PS5. For more information, refer to the following: PS5 SSD: How Much Storage Space Does It Have?

What Is Other Storage Space on PS5?

If you head to the Storage section of the PS5 Settings menu, you'll see a breakdown of the type of files being used by your SSD. They are divided into the following categories: Games and Apps, Media Gallery, Saved Data, and Other. While the first three are fairly self-explanatory, the latter can inexplicably explode in size depending on how you're using the console.

Here's what Sony describes Other storage space as:

This storage space is reserved for system data needed for games and apps to work properly. The amount of space reserved depends on how your console is being used.

Not particularly enlightening, then. Based on our experiments thus far, we think that this is related to backwards compatibility, although other system settings do appear to affect it as well. In addition to this, it may be impossible to entirely eliminate Other storage space, because it appears this is where metadata about your games is stored — it almost certainly scales with how much content you have on your console. As part of our PS5 guide, we're going to explain some steps you can take to minimise this number.

How to Remove Other Storage Space from PS5

As mentioned, we're yet to completely eliminate Other storage space from our PS5, but we have been able to minimise how much space it consumes. The best, and easiest way, is to move your PS4 backwards compatible games to an external HDD. You can find out more information on that through here: How to Use an External HDD on PS5.

By storing all of our PS4 software on an external HDD, we were able to reduce 90GB of Other storage space to just 13GB, which is much more manageable. If you don't have an external HDD, then you may want to consider reducing the number of last-gen titles you have installed on your PS5's SSD — especially if you're not playing them.

One other thing to consider is adjusting your Create button settings and reducing the amount of video footage the PS5 is recording while you play. To do this, go to Settings > Captures and Broadcasts > Captures > Shortcuts for Create Button > Length of Recent Gameplay Video Clip. Try reducing this to 5 Minutes or less and see if it improves the amount of Other storage space being used.

You should also check whether you're currently downloading any games or updates by tapping the PlayStation button and selecting the Downloads/Uploads utility from the Control Centre. Partial data, which is yet to be installed on the console, may temporarily exist within Other storage space, so this number will bloat while you're downloading content.

Have you managed to successfully remove Other storage space from your PS5? Check out our PS5 guide, and let us know in the comments section below.