Ways to Free Up Storage Space in iCloud

Are you running out of cloud storage and don't want to buy more? Here are a few ways to free up space in iCloud.

Apple's iCloud storage service can be used to keep away photos, videos, device backups, and more in the cloud. The company offers users 5GB of space for free, however because it's 5GB of space per Apple ID and not per device, you may find yourself running out of space faster than you would like. While additional storage can be purchased from Apple, there are ways to free up space in your iCloud account before spending some extra cash. 

1. Check your space

To see how much space you are using, enter Settings on your iPhone or iPad, select iCloud, click Storage, followed by Manage Storage. 

2. Delete old backups  

There is a good chance that your backups are taking up most of your space. If you have backups from your old device, for instance from an iPhone 5 or iPad 3 that you no longer own, you can just go ahead and delete them. Simply click on the backup scroll to the bottom and tap Delete Backup. 

3. Change backup settings  

You may also be backing up items that you don't really need to have saved in the cloud. For example, Safari data (or Google Chrome or Firefox data) and Contacts saved in email. This may be different for everyone. Head to Setting and click on iCloud. From here you can pick and choose which items you would like to be saved to iCloud. If you find something you really don't care about, flip the switch to off to delete the data. This will also make sure it isn't backed up the next time you perform a backup. 

4. Alternative photo services

An easy way to free up a lot of space in iCloud is to delete photos from your backups. Instead of having photos stored in iCloud, I suggest using one of the many third-party cloud services that offer even more free space than Apple. For example Google Photos, which offers unlimited storage for free. There's also Yahoo's Flickr app, Microsoft One Drive, DropBox, and Amazon Cloud Drive.