Stupid question about iCloud storage

[patrollingpaws]

I've just got a new iPhone. It's 128GB, if that's relevant.

I got a notification on my phone this morning to say it can't back up to iCloud and has said I need either £2.99 per month additional storage or £8.99 pm. I'm already paying 79p.

I do have a ridiculous number of photos, 12k and rising 😳

Do I need to do a massive cull to avoid the extra charges, or do I just pay?

Thanks!

Yes you need to cull unfortunately or pay

Yes you need to cull. The 79p storage has actually gone up to 99p now

You can check how space is being used in :
Settings > General > iPhone storage

It sounds like you need to either purchase more iCloud space, or as you suggest have a cull, or alternatively not back up the phone completely (bad idea).

You can manage your iCloud storage in

Settings > Apple ID (i.e. the panel below the search) > iCloud > Manage Account Storage.

Options...
Deleting the photos and videos on the Phone
A bit painful, but don't forget you can multi-select photos for deletion, which makes it slightly easier.

Or....

1. Purchase more iCloud space
2. Wait for the phone to sync (might take 24 hours)
3. Login to iCloud.com and check that the photos have uploaded.
4. Delete the unwanted photos on iCloud.com, as it will remove them from all devices that are enabled on the same account. (i.e. your phone)

Or ...

1. Purchase more iCloud space
2. Wait for the phone to sync (might take 24 hours)
3. Access a Mac that is logged into the same Apple ID and wait for it to update the Photos in the Photos application. (might take 24 hours)
4. Delete the unwanted photos in the Photos Application, as it will remove them from all devices that are enabled on the same account. (i.e. your phone)

Personally I would prefer to do it on a Mac as it's much easier and will automatically detect duplicates for you.

You can then optionally downgrade your iCloud storage, once you have freed up the space.

You can download them to your computer too, you don't have to pay Apple for storage: support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302

You could not pay and not back up. All the photos will still be on your phone but will be gone if you lose it.

It’s not THE greatest money saving technique, but I have the Apple One subscription which is £33 but includes Music, Apple TV, 2TB storage, fitness, News and maybe some other things for the whole family. It’s only worth it if you want the other things, but we were paying £16 for just music anyway…

Thanks everyone! I've just checked my storage in settings and, second stupid question, it says I'm only using 40GB of my 128GB allowance, so why do I have to pay for more storage?

This is your phone storage, your icloud storage is different

Hi, I have an iPhone 8, not bad storage old phone now lol in comparison to the new ones!
But yes I have been probably rather stupidly paying for storage for some time, and your post has given me a reminder that I need to really delete delete and try to not have to pay for that storage.

I was paying £0.79 or £0.99, and then it increased or i might have even run out of space 🤦‍♀️ and now i am paying more, so i've got to get that sorted.

You are looking at the storage used on your phone, which is 40GB of 128GB.

You can see what makes up the 40GB, (largely apps and their associated data rather than photos)

So you'll need (roughly) 40GB of storage on iCloud to back-up and sync it with other Apple devices (i.e. iPad, Macs and Apple TVs) if you have them.

To manage your iCloud storage have a look at ...

Settings > Apple ID (i.e. the panel below the search) > iCloud > Manage Account Storage.

The €2.99 charge is worth it, IMO, and will allow family members to backup their phones to it too.

If you have a gmail account, pay google e20 per year then install google photos on your phone, table and it will backup your photos to your google account, the you can trun off icloud photo backup

You can install google drive on your computer and set it to backup old photos to google photos

Google photos works with all devices so you can sign in on any phone or computer and your photos are instantly on it

On my TV i can look at photos i took with my phone today,

on my phone i can scroll all the way back to the photos i took with my first digital camera in christmas 1999

I can order photos and albums to be printed and posted to me from all my devices too