- One of the most common complaints we hear from people
is that their iCloud storage is full,
and their iPhone won't shut up about it.
- If you're outta storage, you have two options.
Buy more space, which is what Apple wants you to do,
or delete what's stored in iCloud.
- You don't wanna delete your personal information,
but you don't have to,
and you don't have to pay for iCloud storage either
if you're smart about it.
- Let's open up the Settings app.
Tap on your Apple ID at the top of the screen,
then tap on iCloud,
and here you can see what's taking up iCloud storage space
on your iPhone.
And as you can see, mine is almost full.
Let's start by tapping on Photos.
- iCloud photos includes both photos
and videos you take in your iPhone.
Photos themselves are small,
but ProRAW photos can be up to 120 megabytes,
and videos can be a whole lot bigger than that.
- Especially if you have a newer iPhone,
and you're using ProRes for videos.
One minute of ProRes video
can take up to six gigabytes of storage space.
It's nuts.
- And that's more than the five gigabytes
you get for free with iCloud.
- You have the option to turn off
and delete all your photos from iCloud
by tapping this switch next to Sync This iPhone,
but that's probably not what you wanna do,
especially if you rely on iCloud for your photos.
- This video is about managing iCloud storage space,
and photos and videos are usually the biggest offenders.
Later in this video,
we'll show you how to back up your photos
and videos to your computer, either Mac or PC,
so that you don't have to use iCloud to do it,
and then you don't have to pay for storage space.
But first we'll show you how to do it with the Photos app.
- But before we do,
there is a way you can prevent yourself
from making a mistake.
- Fortunately, Apple has a website
where you can download a backup of all of your iCloud data,
including your photos and videos at once,
so it's a good safeguard.
We're gonna go to privacy.apple.com,
sign in with John Upphone.
You have an option here to get a copy of your data
,which is what we're gonna do,
or transfer it to Google Photos.
We'll talk more about that later.
So I'll tap request a copy of your data here,
and you can Select All, get them all at once,
or come on down here, check the box next to iCloud photos,
and then tap Continue.
And then at the top here, Apple's going to ask you
what size files you want to download eventually.
Choose the biggest one,
unless you don't want to for some reason,
and then tap Complete Request.
Bigger files means less work for you to do
after you download all the files.
- And just so you know,
this process can take up to seven days,
but it's a good idea
that you have a backup of all your stuff.
- Okay, let's go to the Photos app.
- Gonna close out of Settings, open Photos.
We recommend starting by looking at your ProRAW
and ProRes folders.
So RAW, I've got 10 photos in here.
I don't need any of these.
Tap Select, and you know how to delete photos.
Just tap the ones you don't want anymore.
Then tap the trash can, delete 10 photos.
And if you don't like individually tapping on files
let's go into ProRes here, tap Select,
and then tap Select All, and it selects all of 'em.
Let's tap the trash can, delete those videos.
- In terms of what the biggest offenders are
in iCloud storage, it's gonna be ProRAW videos,
followed by ProRes photos, followed by regular videos,
followed by Live photos and panoramas,
and then all of your other photos.
- That's the order you should go on
if you're trying to free up space.
Let's head back to the Settings app.
I'm gonna tap back to iCloud,
tap on iCloud Drive,
and then tap on Manage Storage.
- This is why I don't use iCloud Drive
to back up my desktop,
or my documents folder on my computer.
If I wanted to turn that off,
I could either go through
and individually delete files,
which David's gonna show you how to do,
or on my computer itself.
Gonna tap Command+Space to open System Settings.
Used to be System Preferences, still getting used to that.
Then on the left hand side, tap on your name,
then Tap iCloud, then tap iCloud Drive,
and I have iCloud Drive on, but then tap on Options,
and then I have desktop and documents folders unchecked.
Otherwise, that would fill up my entire iCloud storage-
- Yeah, I've got 110 gigabytes of storage space
being taken up by that.
I think I'm just gonna go turn that switch off
after this video,
but if you wanna delete documents directly on your iPhone,
swipe right to left, and then tap Delete.
Tap Delete, it'll delete it both on your iPhone
and on your computer.
- Right, so if you're gonna turn it off on your computer,
uncheck this first so that then
it doesn't get deleted from everywhere.
- Before we leave the Photos app,
one important thing to keep in mind
is that after you delete a photo, it's not permanently gone.
It goes to the Recently Deleted folder for 30 days,
and still counts against your iCloud storage.
So in the Photos app, open the Recently Deleted album,
tap Select, and then tap Delete All, delete 14 items.
Now they're totally gone,
and your iCloud storage is freed up.
Next, let's talk about iCloud Mail.
People run into issues when they have a bunch of emails
with large attachments taking up iCloud storage space.
- So iCloud Mail is only if you have an @icloud.com,
@mac.com, @me.com email address through Apple,
not if you're using Gmail.
- That's why I use Gmail. It's free.
- Showing you how to migrate an iCloud email address
to Gmail is beyond the scope of this video,
but we can show you how
to filter out large email attachments.
- In the Mail app,
you can filter your inbox by messages with attachments
and delete the ones you no longer need.
So I'm in the Mail app here.
I'm gonna tap the Filter button.
in the lower left hand corner of the screen.
It says Filtered by Unread and Attachment.
I'm gonna tap on that,
and just make sure only mail with attachments is selected.
Tap done.
Here are a list of all your emails with attachments.
Go in, delete some of those, save some iCloud storage space.
- Messages on your iPhone
can take up a lot of iCloud storage space, too.
- In the Settings app,
let's go back to the main page of settings.
Scroll down and tap on messages,
and then scroll down until you see Keep Messages,
tap on that.
To save some iCloud storage space pretty quickly,
switch this to 30 days.
- If you choose to do this,
make sure you save the photos and videos that you want
from the people you love first.
Otherwise, you could lose
all those cute puppy pictures from Mom.
- Now that we've cleared out the biggest offenders,
let's tap back to the main page of Settings,
scroll up, and tap on your Apple ID
at the top of the screen, tap iCloud, tap Show All,
and here's a list of the apps using iCloud on your iPhone.
- You might think turning off Reminders, News, Stocks,
or Home would save you iCloud storage space, but it doesn't.
This part of iCloud
is more about synchronizing across devices.
These features don't use any storage at all.
- Let's scroll down and take a look at the switch
next to Voice Memos.
If that is on,
your iPhone is sending your voice memos to iCloud,
taking up storage space.
Let's go to the Voice Memos app.
I don't have a ton of recordings, but if you do,
you can quickly share them to your Mac
by tapping the three dots, and then tapping Share,
and select the location.
- Voice Memos is one of those things
you might not want to back up to iCloud,
because usually if you have a voice memo,
I would use my phone to listen to that as well.
However, if you have iCloud backup turned on,
then you'd have to go in there and turn off voice memos,
which is kind of a pain.
- One other note about voice memos
is that when you delete them,
they show up in a Recently Deleted folder.
Tap on that,
and to get rid of them for good
and clear up some iCloud storage space,
swipe right to left and tap, Delete, Delete Forever.
- Next, a super important feature to check iCloud backups.
First thing is you really need to make sure
that there aren't extra backups in iCloud
from old devices that you no longer need.
- Let's head back to the Settings app.
Tap back to iCloud, upper left-hand corner of the screen,
then tap on iCloud backup, and here, all device backups.
I have one, it says this iPhone.
I have one that doesn't say this iPhone.
Obviously the one that isn't this iPhone,
that's an old backup.
I don't need that anymore,
and it's taking up 6.2 gigabytes of iCloud storage space.
Let's tap on that, then tap Delete and Turn off Backup,
tap Turn Off.
- Before we show you how to manually transfer photos
and videos to your computer
so you don't have to pay for iCloud,
it's important to know how much iCloud actually costs,
and it really can add up over time.
- ICloud storage plans start at 99 cents per month.
I'm a sucker. I pay 2.99 per month.
- You think you're a sucker.
I pay 32.99 a month,
because I got my parents started
on the Apple One Premier plan, or whatever it's called,
and now I can never stop paying for it.
- Apple is now incentivizing us
to pay for more iCloud storage space
by offering features like Private Relay,
which breaks websites, and Hide My Email.
- Those are part of iCloud Plus.
- In the US, 50 gigabytes cost $0.99 a month.
200 gigabytes is 2.99 a month,
and then two terabytes is 9.99 a month,
and that's separate from the Apple One plans.
- The individual Apple One plan is 16.95 per month.
Family plan is 22.95 per month,
and the Premier plan is 32.95 per month.
- What if you need more than two terabytes
of iCloud storage?
You think you're out of luck, but you're not.
In addition to the family sharing two terabytes,
you can also sign up
for an iCloud Plus two terabyte plan individually,
so then the two together add up to four terabytes.
It's an additional 9.99 a month
in addition to your 32.95 a month.
It gets very expensive, but you can do it.
- But if you don't wanna spend all that money
on iCloud storage space,
you could just back up your iPhone to your computer.
- Right, and how much is that gonna save you?
Well, it depends on how much you pay for one of these guys.
A four terabyte external hard drive on Amazon right now
costs about a hundred dollars.
This is an old 1 1/2 terabyte one,
and I'm gonna show you how to use your PC and your Mac
to back up your photos.
Let's bring in the PC,
which is actually a Mac running Windows, but same thing.
I'm gonna plug in my external hard drive to the computer.
The one thing you need to know
when you connect your iPhone to the PC
is that it acts like a digital camera.
I'll plug in my iPhone also.
If you've never connected it before
you'll see setting up a device down here.
Then I can select choose what happens
when I connect the device,
and we'll say import photos and videos to Photos.
You also have to make sure
that you allow access to this device on your iPhone.
If you see this little prompt, then I can tap Try Again.
It will say looking for a device
to import from, Apple iPhone.
Then I can change the destination.
And in this case,
since I don't wanna fill up my laptop hard drive,
I'll just back it right up to the Photos folder.
You could choose to delete the original items after import.
I'm not gonna do that right now.
Instead, I'll tap Select, All Items,
and I'll say import 71 of 71 items.
And that's going to copy all of these to the hard drive.
How to find these, Windows+E, on the left, Photos,
and we will see a list of all of our photos
coming in right now.
What if you want to save money on iCloud storage space
by backing up your photos to your Mac?
Same process as a PC.
I'm gonna plug in the external drive
that I bought on Amazon, then I'll plug in the iPhone.
Usually when you wanna transfer photos or videos to a Mac,
you're gonna use the Photos app.
But if you want to get around the iCloud thing,
it's easier to use an older utility
that's built into every Mac called Image Capture.
I'll tap Command+Space to open Spotlight,
and type in Image Capture, appears at the top there.
I'll tap Return.
I've connected my iPhone,
says please unlock the iPhone, of course.
There you go.
Be aware of these three little dots
at the top of the screen.
So tap on those,
and then connecting this iPhone opens no application.
First thing you should choose is Image Capture,
just makes your life easier.
Keep Originals.
We wanna have that, but then you can do Delete After Import.
That's gonna take 'em off your phone
so that they're just on your computer.
Next, choose where you want to import the pictures to.
Tap this little down arrow, choose Other,
and I have my external drive, which is called Photos,
so I'll tap on that, and then I'll tap Choose
in the bottom right hand corner, and then Download All.
You see them disappearing here from this list
as they're being copied to the Photos drive.
I can see that happening if I double tap on Photos
to open that up.
Before we wrap up the computer section of this video,
I just want to say that just because you copied your photos
and videos from your iPhone to your computer
doesn't mean they're backed up.
If your photos and videos are only in one place,
they're not backed up.
So make sure to have a backup of your computer
if you choose to go that way.
- Let's answer a couple FAQs first.
"Is it safe to save my photos to iCloud?
What about those celebrity leaks?"
- It's never 100% safe to trust anybody,
but it's a lot safer than it used to be.
I save my photos to iCloud.
- Apple fixed that specific bug eight years ago.
Don't worry about it.
- Are there any good iCloud alternatives?
- The value of cloud storage is in its convenience.
You want a set it and forget it solution.
- The most obvious iCloud photo replacement
is Google Photos,
which gives you 15 gigabytes of free storage,
which obviously doesn't count against
your iCloud storage space,
and Google's Photos online interface
is actually pretty cool.
- It's also really useful if you wanna share albums
with someone who has an Android phone in your family.
- There are other cloud alternatives like Box and Dropbox,
which are just not as good at integrating seamlessly
with your iPhone.
- Cloud storage might also be included
with your cell phone plan
if you have a premium unlimited plan.
So check the details.
- But be careful,
because those apps are the most clunky of all.
And if you ever change cell phone carriers,
bye-bye cloud storage.
Bye-bye photos.
I'm surprised that there hasn't been an anti-trust push
around Apple's integration with iCloud,
and how the Settings app on an iPhone
doesn't integrate as well with Google photos
or other backup solutions.
- And now that you've freed up some iCloud storage space,
check out our other video
to learn about the settings you should never change.