But I Dont Want To Lose My Photos
You wont. If you turn on My Photo Stream on your Mac or PC , your pictures will automatically download to your computer when your iPhone and iPad are connected to Wi-Fi.
The limitation of My Photo Stream is that photos only stay up there for 30 days, but if your iPhone is on any Wi-Fi network, home or abroad, your computer will automatically download all your photos as long as its connected to Wi-Fi too.
The other limitation of My Photo Stream is this: It doesnt synchronize your videos. Youll never have to pay for iCloud Storage again, but you will have to plug your iPhone into your computer every once in a while to back up your videos.
Heres why this usually isnt a big deal: Videos are huge and youre probably doing this anyway.
You could spend a zillion years uploading all those videos to iCloud Drive over Wi-Fi , or you can quickly transfer them to your computer with your USB cable and be done with it.
In my opinion, your photos and videos are safer stored on your own computer than on iCloud Drive, as long as your computer is backed up too. iCloud Storage is extremely secure and Im not saying its going to get wiped out, but issues with passwords and user accounts can make it difficult to access your own photos if theyre not stored on your computer.
Clean Up Your Photo Library
When you have iCloud Photos turned on, every picture and video you take automatically gets synced. But the same is true for all those other photos you took where the angle was bad or it came out blurry. And actually, the same is true for every screenshot youve taken it all gets automatically synced to iCloud.
Fortunately, you can use our very own app, Gemini Photos, to scan your photo library and quickly remove the pictures you dont want anymore. Before you start cleaning up your library, its important to double-check that iCloud Photos is turned on on your phone by going to Settings > > iCloud > Photos. Then start cleaning up your photo library using Gemini Photos.
Check out our guide to deleting photos on iPhone for other tricks you may have overlooked.
Icloud: When Everything Works Like It’s Supposed To
iCloud is a free account that’s tied to your Apple ID and can back up your iPhone. However, it doesn’t back up everything on your phone. Things you buy with your Apple ID, such as apps or music, won’t back up because Apple has a receipt that you already bought them and will allow you to download them again for free. Email, contacts and calendars are usually synced with your email account like Gmail, but in some cases, you might also sync these things with iCloud.
You can double-check all this by going to Settings and then going into either Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Notes or Reminders. In any of these settings, you can tap Accounts to view your various accounts. Under each account, you can see what’s being synced: mail, contacts, calendars and so on.
To start a backup to iCloud, connect your iPhone to Wi-Fi and then go to Settings and tap on the Apple ID/iCloud tab at the top, which also has your name. If you’re not signed in, take a moment to do so and then tap on iCloud. On the next page, scroll down and tap iCloud Backup, enable iCloud Backup and then tap Back Up Now to start.
The setting that tells your phone to maintain automatic iCloud backups, as well as the button to Back Up Now are buried deep within the Settings app, one screen past the backup settings for individual apps.
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About Icloud And Apple One
In 2020, Apple introduced a new subscription-based bundle called Apple One. This plan is a one-stop-shop for every subscription service Apple offers, including Apple Fitness+.
We wont get into the specifics of Apple One here, but since it offers iCloud storage as part of the package, its worth mentioning in this discussion.
Apple One offers three different plans:
- The Individual plan, which includes 50GB of iCloud storage for $14.95 per month
- The Family plan, with 200GB of storage for $19.95 per month
- The Premier Plan, which offers 2TB of storage for $29.95 per month.
Remember that the Premier Plan is only available in some regions, including the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. This is because services like Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+ are only available in these countries.
These plans offer a bunch of other services, like Apple Arcade and Apple Music. If you already use those services, you can save by bundling them all together. However, if youre primarily looking to buy iCloud storage, Apple One isn’t worth it for you.
Say you use Apple Music and Apple Arcade . In this case, the Individual Apple One plan throws in 50GB of iCloud space for no additional cost, so it’s worth it even if you don’t use Apple TV+.
Keep in mind that if you aren’t dead-set on using iCloud, there are other cheap cloud storage options to try, too.
Who Should Buy The $099/month 50gb Plan
If you want to ensure that you can back up your iPhone and/or iPad without worry, save a few documents in iCloud Drive, and take a reasonable amount of images and video you’d like to sync to iCloud Photo Library, 50GB is a good starting point for most users. That said, you may still want Dropbox or Google if you plan to store a lot of content online or like the security of multiple backups.
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What About Apple One’s Storage Plan
Having to choose between the best iCloud storage plan and some other Apple service will be a thing of the past. Recently, Apple revealed a new all-in-one subscription service called Apple One.
Apple One bundles up to six Apple services, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and iCloud storage.
There’s a total of three plans to choose from, and depending on which one you choose, you’ll get more iCloud storage.
Apple Quietly Announces Great News About Icloud Storage
Apple just changed how much you’ll have to shell out for extra cloud storage — and in a good way.
One of the many announcements at Apple’s annual developers conference, WWDC, was new iCloud pricing and a family plan.
The first big change is the elimination of 1TB storage. Instead you can buy 2TB for $9.99 per month — that’s what the 1TB cost before the changes. Other storage options are 50GB for 99 cents per month or 200GB for $2.99 per month.
You still only get 5GB of free storage when you sign up though — sorry.
But now you can get double the space for the same 10 bucks. If you already were on the 1TB plan you’ll get automatically upgraded to the biggest plan.
Mashable chief tech correspondent Lance Ulanoff had anticipated a pricing change in his WWDC preview, “I also hope Apple further lowers the price of iCloud storage to make it more attractive for businesses and individuals.”
So here we are.
People seem most pumped about the iCloud Family Sharing plan. Everyone can split just one storage plan in iOS11 and macOS High Sierra.
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Check Your Icloud Storage On Your Mac
On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then click iCloud.
The bar graph shows your overall storage usage.
On the left, you see a list of apps and features and how much iCloud storage they use. The apps and features that use the most storage are at the top of the list. You can click an app or feature for more information.
Gb Plan: Best For Small Families Or Heavy Users
The 200GB storage plan for $2.99 per month is a better choice for families and power users. Youll have a generous amount of space for a few dollars per month, which is still a great deal for cloud storage.
Another major benefit of this iCloud plan is that it supports Apples Family Sharing feature. With one subscription, you can share your 200GB of storage with up to five other family members. This means a total of six people share your 200GB of iCloud storage. Each family members storage is private, though. So you wont be able to see other peoples files or pictures, and they can’t see yours either.
You should choose this plan if you consider yourself a heavy user. If you have several Apple devices, and you use many apps that require an iCloud account to work across all your devices, 200GB will come in handy. Also, if youre a parent or part of a big family, being able to share 200GB with every member of your family is convenient and better than everyone paying $1/month for 50GB individually.
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Which Icloud Subscription Should You Buy
Now you know the different storage options available to you, which is the best for you? Theres no point in paying £6.99 a month for 2TB of storage if you only use it to back up your iPhone, after all. You should consider factors like whether youre already getting iCloud storage full notifications, whether you use iCloud Drive to store your documents or whether you primarily use another service like Google Drive or Dropbox, if you are using iCloud Photo Library, and whether youre using iCloud Drive Desktop and Documents to sync documents between multiple Macs.
The above are all very important factors when considering iCloud storage options, but theres more to it to than that. We break it down below. For a guide to using iCloud read:How to use iCloud.
Reduce The Size Of Your Icloud Backup
When you back up your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to iCloud, the most important information on your device is backed up automatically. Learn more about what iCloud backs up.
Many apps automatically back up to iCloud after you install them. You can decrease the size of your iCloud Backup and free up space in iCloud when you stop backing up apps that you don’t use or delete old iCloud backups.
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Delete Messages And Manage Mail
You can free up iCloud space when you delete email messages from your iCloud email account. You can also move email messages from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac or PC, where they no longer count against your iCloud storage.
Use the steps below to delete messages from your account. Remember that messages with large attachments take up more space than simple text emails.
How Much Storage Are You Using
Its easy to figure out how much iCloud storage you are using.
In iOS: Tap the top section in Settings. Then tap iCloud. You should see a chart detailing how you are using iCloud storage. Tap Manage Storage to reach a page listing every item storing data in your iCloud . You can also delete stored data for each app or service, but dont do so until you have first backed up that information elsewhere.
Apple
In macOS: Access System Preferences> iCloud and choose the “Manage…” option at the bottom right of the window.
Apple
In both cases youll see how much storage youre using, what items are using it , and where to enable and disable online storage for various applications and Apple services.
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Manage Your Icloud Storage
Need more iCloud storage? You can easily manage your storage to make space or upgrade to iCloud+.
When you set up iCloud, you automatically get 5GB of storage. You can use that space for your iCloud backups, to keep your photos and videos stored in iCloud Photos, to keep your documents up to date in iCloud Drive, and more. You can always check how much iCloud storage you’re using in Settings on your device or on iCloud.com. If you’re running low, you can manage your storage to make more space or upgrade to iCloud+ any time.
Not sure about the difference between the storage capacity that comes with your device and iCloud storage? Learn more about device storage and iCloud storage.
Iphone Ipad And Ipod Touch
To select multiple photos or videos, tap Select on iOS or iPadOS, or press and hold Command on a Mac or Control on a PC while you select the items. To select all, press and hold Command-A on macOS or Control-A on Windows, or tap Select All on iOS or iPadOS.
You can recover photos and videos that you delete from your Recently Deleted album for 30 days. If you want to remove content from Recently Deleted album faster, tap Select, then select the items you want to remove. Tap Delete > Delete. If you exceed your iCloud storage limit, your device immediately removes any photos and videos you delete and they won’t be available for recovery in your Recently Deleted album.
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Why Do You Need To Manage Icloud Storage
Apple has made iCloud storage a seemingly essential element for all its products, from Macs to iPads, iPhones and even Apple TV. There are four principal elements to the service. These include:
- iCloud Backup: Its used for all the iPad, iPhone and iPod backups youve made without using iTunes.
- iCloud Drive: This is for all your documents and data from third-party apps on Macs and iOS devices that store data in the cloud. Apple’s iCloud Documents and Data service was combined with iCloud Drive in 2022.
- iCloud Mail: Naturally, this is storage for all the emails and attachments youve ever received through your iCloud account.
- iCloud Photo Library: This is storage for all the pictures and videos youve ever taken.
Thats an extensive list of items to squeeze inside Apples ever-so-tiny 5GB free allocation. To get the most out of it, you may want to regularly check how much storage youre already using and take steps to migrate some of those storage tasks to non-Apple products and services.
Apple Offers Just 5gb Of Free Storage To Icloud Users Far Less Than Many Need Here’s A Rundown On What You Can Do To Put Your Icloud Storage Needs On A Diet And What Other Options Are Available
No matter how many iOS or macOS devices you own, Apple offers just 5GB of free storage to iCloud users a paltry amount given what rivals offer. But there are ways you can avoid paying for more storage space, or at least limit how much extra you pay.
Here are easy-to-follow tips on how to put some of the biggest iCloud data-consuming features on a diet and save money on iCloud storage.
Apple
No matter how many iPhones, iPads or Macs you buy, Apple only provides 5GB of free iCloud storage.
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Icloud Storage Full Never Pay For Icloud Backup Again
iCloud Storage is one of the most misused and misunderstood features of the iPhone. I love Apple products, but theres no other way to put this: In most cases, buying iCloud Storage is unnecessary and you should never pay for it.
In 99% of cases, you dont have to pay any extra money to fully back up your iPhone and iPad. Ill explain the real reason why your iCloud Storage is full, why your iPhone hasnt backed up to iCloud for weeks, and how to fix iCloud Backup for good.
Most people dont believe its possible, but let me be clear: After you read this article, youll understand how to back up your iPhone, iPad, and photos to iCloud without paying for iCloud Storage.
If youve seen messages like This iPhone hasnt been backed up in weeks, iPhone cannot be backed up because there is not enough iCloud storage available, or Not Enough Storage, dont worry. Theyll be gone by the time you finish reading this article.
Which Plan Should You Buy
When choosing an iCloud storage plan, think about why you need it and your intended use. If youre using it in addition to other cloud services like , Google Photos, or Dropbox, you may not need to spring for as much storage space. On the other hand, if you find youre running out of space for device backups or youre using iClouds Desktop and Documents feature to sync devices, you may need more.
Free: If your life is not awash in Apple devices, or you already use Google services or Dropbox, the free version of the service may be all you need. While you may have to perform device backups directly to your Mac as opposed to iCloud, that shouldnt be a problem.
50GB plan : This is the best plan for very casual users or those who employ additional backup strategies. Generally, you will want to have it hold your iPhone and iPad backups in the cloud instead of your Mac and store a moderate number of documents, images, or video.
200GB plan : This is the best plan for heavy users and those with families or friends to share storage space with. If you have multiple devices and want to keep them all backed up, use iCloud Drive regularly, or have been building a substantial iCloud Photo Library, 200GB is a good bet for you. It supports the family sharing feature for a total of six people on one account, each with their own private storage and log in.
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