If you own an iPhone or iPad, you probably know that Apple only offers 5GB of free space on iCloud, its online storage platform. This is relatively little and certainly less than other cloud platforms (15GB for Google, for example).
If you need to free up iCloud storage space, the easiest option is to pay a monthly subscription to increase its capacity up to 2TB. However, if you can't afford it or just want to find creative solutions to free up space, you can read on.
First of all, it is important to clarify that there is no free miracle solution. To free up space on iCloud, we will have to make compromises.
And it's going to start with a big spring cleaning. You're going to have to delete or move the files you've saved, in order to free up space little by little. That's because there are many apps that tend to sync with iCloud, leaving backups, files, and other things you may not need.
But let's look at this in more detail and look at some solutions you can implement to free up iCloud space on your iPhone or iPad. Let's go !
Uninstall apps you no longer use
One of the most foolproof solutions to free up iCloud storage space is to uninstall apps that you don't use or no longer use on your iPhone. Indeed, as I said above, many apps sync their data with iCloud and gradually end up consuming all the available space.
Take the time to sort through your applications and delete those that are useless or that you never open. This is really the most effective solution for cleaning up iCloud and you will notice that some applications are particularly greedy, especially if you have used them a lot and you no longer use them.
Turn off syncing for apps that don't need to be linked to iCloud
If all your apps are connected to iCloud, it simply means that you are wasting a lot of space in the cloud, especially for apps that don't necessarily need to stay linked to iCloud. To fix this, you need to do the following:
- Go to the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad
- Click on your account at the very top (with your name and photo)
- Scroll down a bit and go to iCloud
- In the “Apps using iCloud” section, click “Show all”
- You will then see a list of your apps with a button indicating whether they sync their data with iCloud
Then turn off iCloud sync for any apps that you feel do not need to back up data.
For obvious reasons, it's best not to disable certain apps or services like Photos, iCloud Drive, or Passwords & Keychain… and any apps where you consider the data to be critical to you.
Delete backups
A radical but devilishly effective solution, you can delete iCloud backups to do some cleaning. If you want to delete unnecessary backups that are just using up available space, here's what you need to do:
- Go to Settings
- Then back to your account (at the very top)
- Go to iCloud, then, under the first line where you see a breakdown of your iCloud space usage, click on “Manage account storage”.
- Here you can see which apps you have backups for and how much space they take up. If you click on one of them, you can delete the backup itself.
To go even further, you can go to “Backups” to delete the backups of your old iOS devices… However, avoid deleting the backup of your current device…
Delete files that are taking up space on your iPhone
This is the last tip, but perhaps the most important of all. That's because in the Photos app and Files, there are probably a lot of photos, videos, and other files that you no longer need to keep.
It's a bit tedious, but it's important to do some cleaning from time to time. Take the courage to start deleting everything you no longer need to keep, and you'll see. how your space will start to free up step by step.
To conclude on optimizing iCloud storage
Feel free to explore all of your options to find the ones that best suit your needs.
In summary, to free up iCloud storage space, you can:
- Uninstall apps you no longer use
- Turn off iCloud syncing for apps you don't think are necessary
- Delete unnecessary backups
- Delete unnecessary files from your device
It's important to clean up your device and iCloud storage regularly to avoid reaching your storage limit too quickly. By getting into the habit of regularly deleting unnecessary files and apps, you should be able to keep your storage below the limits.
Article updated on April 6, 2023 by Byothe
