Are you fed up with those pop-up notifications telling you that you’re low on space in your iCloud account? Good news: you don’t need to endure them much longer.
And even better, you won’t need to spend any money to upgrade your account either.
Apple gives every user 5GB of free storage on iCloud, which seems like almost nothing. But if you play the game right, you’ll realize that it’s more than enough for all your needs.
Find Out What’s Taking the Most Space
When your iCloud storage is full, the best place to start is finding out what is taking up the most space across your devices. More often than not, you’ll be surprised at what the answer is.
To find out what’s taking up the most space in iCloud on your iPhone:
- Go to Settings.
- Click through to Apple ID.
- Go to iCloud > Manage Storage.
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for (var i = 0; i When you’re on the Manage Storage tab, you will receive a breakdown of what is using the most space in your iCloud account. For some functions, you can go through and delete the data to free up some storage space.
Delete Your Old Photos
Photos are often the most apparent storage thief in your iCloud account. If you take photos with a professional camera and upload them to your phone, this is even more the case.
To delete photos on your iPhone:
- Go to your camera roll.
- Select the images you want to delete.
- Go back to the main menu of the camera roll.
- Go into the Recently Deleted folder.
- Select Delete All and confirm.
Delete Your Old Emails
If you have connected your email account to iCloud but rarely use your messages, you’re eating up valuable space that you could use elsewhere. If you use the service for many years, the amount of data these use will slowly add up.
To delete your old emails:
- Go to your Mail app.
- Select the emails you want to delete.
- Delete these emails and close the app.
If you don’t use Mail that often, you can also choose to delete the app from your phone. That way, you won’t build up a list of wasted data again.
Remove Files From iCloud Drive
If you have a MacBook or Mac, you might not realize that you’re still storing files that you haven’t for ages. As your data goes down, these will become more of an annoyance.
Fortunately, removing iCloud files from your computer’s drive is straightforward.
To delete iCloud files from your computer’s drive:
- Open Finder.
- Go down to iCloud Drive in the left-hand menu.
- Select the files you want to delete and move them to your trash folder.
- Right-click or Ctrl + Click the Trash icon in the dock.
- Select Empty Trash.
Free Up Space on Your Apple Devices
Though it may seem like you’re in a constant battle to clear out your iCloud storage, doing so doesn’t need to be stressful. Regardless of the Apple device you use, there are plenty of ways to see what is eating your data and make changes.
When you’ve cleared out your iCloud storage, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on it. When you notice things getting close to the full mark, repeat these steps and stop them from happening.