iCloud Storage Notice Popping Up on My iPhone 6S

[Mo Money]

I searched to see if this topic has been discussed, with no luck. (Sorry in advance if I'm wrong.)

Every time I turn on my iPhone 6S it tells me that I am out of free iCloud storage and that I should subscribe to one of their plans, which require a monthly payment.

Is this worth it? What does it back up? Does it back up everything on my iPhone like pics, tunes and emails?

 

[Katsmeow]

You get 5GB free but spread across all your Apple devices. Since I have a phone and an iPad I backed up against it pretty quick. What caused it for me was photos. You can choose not to back up photos to iCloud. If so, then you need to back them up to a computer or transfer them over.

That said, I finally broke down and subscribed to their 50GB plan which is $.99 a month and can be cancelled any time.

I did it because I like having my photos available on both devices (Phone and iPad) and I don't want to have to deal with the hassle factor of backing up photos to my computer. And, I figured for $.99 a month it wasn't a huge deal. Still, if it starts annoying me too much I may discontinue it and just start regularly backing up photos to my computer rather than to iCloud.

 

[Mo Money]

Thanks, Katsmeow. I subscribe to Flickr and upload photos to that cloud site. So I just turned off "photo stream" which deleted the photos in that "stream," and now I bet I have plenty of storage. My "cameral roll" still works, which give me access to photos I want.

 

[mpeirce]

You may have a number of old backups for devices you don't even use any more taking up part of your free 5 GB allocation.

Look in Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage

It'll list all the backups it has and how large they are. You can delete old ones there.

 

[Alan]

You may have a number of old backups for devices you don't even use any more taking up part of your free 5 GB allocation.

Look in Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage

It'll list all the backups it has and how large they are. You can delete old ones there.

+1

I also turned off saving photos to the Cloud. When travelling I save photos to both my iPad (airdrop) and to Google drive. When I get back I copy them from Google drive to both our laptops and external devices then eventually delete them on Google drive to save space.

 

[Katsmeow]

+1

I also turned off saving photos to the Cloud. When travelling I save photos to both my iPad (airdrop) and to Google drive. When I get back I copy them from Google drive to both our laptops and external devices then eventually delete them on Google drive to save space.

How do you save them to Google drive? Are you connecting your iPad to a computer and doing that or are you using something else to do that?

 

[mpeirce]

I'm not certain how Alan is doing it. But if you install the Google Drive app, you can enable it's "Sharing Extension", which lets save most things to your google drive by pressing the Sharing Button you see in most apps. Photos certainly lets you do this.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-drive-free-online-storage/id507874739?mt=8
Share extensions in iOS 8: Explained | iMore

 

[Alan]

How do you save them to Google drive? Are you connecting your iPad to a computer and doing that or are you using something else to do that?

I downloaded the Google Drive app on both my iPhone, iPad and Windows laptop. I can access all the files on my GDrive on all 3 devices once I log into my Google account.

One thing I like about Gdrive for the photos is that I can arrange them into folders named after the places we have visited and change the file names to reflect where we were. I do this day by day while I can still remember where they were taken. Then when we get back from our travels it is a very simple job to copy the whole folder structure and file names to the laptop etc.

With Gdrive on the iPhone or iPad I move the photos by going into Gdrive and adding files - I get a prompt to add files from the photo library on the iPhone or iPad

 

[Katsmeow]

Thanks. I will have to try that.