How to Manage Your iCloud Storage and Free up Space in iCloud

As an Apple user, you are entitled to 5GB free iCloud space. This might seem whooping big to you initially, but by the time you start uploading pictures, backing up documents and other things that you need to save on cloud space, you will realize that this space is not enough.

Updated Oct 27,2017 | by Shannon

This lack of space becomes even more severe when you have more than one Apple device, because the 5GB free iCloud space is assigned to an Apple ID, and not Apple device. Hence, since you have only one ID, you have to share that little space amongst all your devices. Because of this, it is important for you to free up some space as often and conveniently as you can, before you think of buying more.

Before you get started, you need to first check how much storage space you have available on iCloud.

Go to “Settings”, click on “iCloud.”

Find “Storage,” click on it, and you’ll see your available iCloud space.

Alternatively, you can easily check your available space by clicking on “General,” and then navigating to “Storage & iCloud Usage”.

When you have done this, and you realize that you’ll run out of storage space soon, here’s what you should do.

Every Apple device you own automatically backs up data from your installed apps into your iCloud storage. This makes it easy for you to back up and get all your data back if you lose your device, or when you buy a new one.

To view the data backed up in your iCloud storage, go to “iCloud,” navigate to “Storage,” and click on “Manage Storage in Settings.” This will show you a list of all backup files and apps, and how much space each of them is using up on your iCloud account. If you have more than one device, you can manage iCloud storage here by clicking on each device to check how much data they are using.

Manage iCloud Storage

To manage your iCloud storage, go to “Backup Options,” and you will see a list of apps under that option. From there, you can disable the apps you don’t necessarily need to back up their data. You can disable apps like Evernote and Pocket Twitter because they already sync their data online. By disabling backup for such apps, the data from them will be automatically cleared from your iCloud Storage.

To disable an old Apple device which you no longer use, you can tap on the device and click on “Delete Backup.” This will clear the entire backup for that device.

To manage iCloud storage better and garner more space, all you need to do to disable automatic backup on your device. To do this, Navigate to iCloud, then you turn off “iCloud Backup.” This will disable automatic iCloud storage, but you can always back up your files manually.

To clear iCloud storage space occupied by photos, go to “iCloud,” tap on “Photos,” and turn it off. If you are so concerned about preserving your photos, you can always back them up on Dropbox, Flickr or Google Photos instead of iCloud Photo Library.

You can also manage iCloud storage space occupied by documents through the “Manage Storage” screen. From there, click on “Documents & Data,” and you’ll see all your backup documents. To delete a document, simply swipe it to the left and click “Delete.”

You can also clear emails that have been taking up your iCloud space by deleting them directly in the email app, or by going to iCloud website. On the website, all you need is to open your email address and delete the unwanted messages.

When you have done all these, and you still need more space, always remember that you can buy more iCloud storage space from Apple.

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