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Key Takeaways

  • Freeing up iCloud storage space can often stop you from upgrading to a more expensive storage plan.
  • Deleting unwanted iCloud backups, managing your photo library, and clearing large iCloud Drive files can free up a few gigabytes of storage.

Running low on iCloud storage but don't want to upgrade your plan? Learn to make the most of the space you already have, which involves removing unwanted items and making other storage optimizations to ensure your iCloud storage doesn't fill up quickly.

How Much Does iCloud Storage Cost?

Fortunately, iCloud isn't terribly expensive. If you want to upgrade to a higher tier rather than spending time deleting data to free up your existing storage, here are your options:

  • $0.99 per month for 50GB
  • $2.99 per month for 200GB
  • $9.99 per month for 2TB
  • $29.99 per month for 6TB
  • $59.99 per month for 12TB

You can also get iCloud storage along with other Apple services at a discounted price by subscribing to Apple One.

Check What's Taking Up Your iCloud Storage

If you're sure you'd rather spend your time instead of spending money, you need to check what's eating up your iCloud storage first.

On an iPhone, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Manage Account Storage.

On a Mac, click the Apple logo in the menu bar and go to System Settings > Apple ID > iCloud. Then, click Manage.

This will tell you what's using space on your iCloud account. For most people, this will likely be photos, messages, iCloud backups, iCloud Drive, and apps. We'll show you how to free up space for each of them and more below.

Delete Unwanted iCloud Backups

If you've owned multiple iOS devices over the years, the chances are high that each of these devices has its own backup stored in your iCloud account.

You can delete backups of old devices you no longer use by following these steps:

  1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Manage Account Storage > Backups.
  2. Now, you'll see which devices have been backed up. Select the device you don't use anymore and tap Delete Backup. This will remove that backup from iCloud.
  3. You can also tap the backup of devices you still use and stop certain apps from saving their data in your iCloud account. Select the device and choose Show All Apps. Now, manually disable backups for specific apps and tap Turn Off. This will remove app data for those apps from your next iCloud backup.

If you use a Mac, go to Apple menu > System Settings > Apple ID > iCloud. Then, click Manage and select Backups. You can now choose which backups to delete. But if you don't want to delete backups and need more room, don't forget that you can reduce the size of your iPhone backup and delete app data from iCloud to help free up storage.

Change Your iPhone's Camera Settings

Review your iPhone's camera settings to ensure you aren't using more space than necessary on iCloud. This involves deciding whether you can switch to 720p or 1080p videos instead of 4K, among other things.

  1. On your iPhone (or iPad), go to Settings > Camera > Formats. To save space, choose High Efficiency. Note that this will save your photos and videos in the HEIF and HEVC formats, respectively, which are not as widely supported as JPG and MP4.
  2. Now, go back to the Camera settings and tap Record Video. Ideally, you should select the lowest frame rate and resolution. You won't get the smoothest or highest quality videos this way, but you'll save iCloud space.
  3. Likewise, select the Record Slo-mo option in the Camera settings and choose the lower frame rate setting.
  4. Also, toggle off Live Photo by going to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings. This will stop your iPhone from recording a three-second video of each photo you capture.

Trim Your Photo Library

Now that you've reduced how much space photos will take going forward, it's time to start clearing unwanted items from your photo library.

Open the Photos app and tap Albums > Videos. Now you can tap Select in the top-right corner and clear all the videos you don't need. Similarly, you can visit albums for the following items: Live Photos, Bursts, Panoramas, Slo-mo, Time-lapse, Screenshots, Screen Recordings, and more. Deleting stuff from these will clear out a lot of space quickly. Finally, review the Recents album in the Photos app to see if you can delete some pictures.

Get Rid of Old and Unwanted Messages

If the Messages app is taking up a lot of space on iCloud, you can quickly free up some space by following these steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Messages on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Now scroll down to Keep Messages and change it from Forever to 30 Days or 1 Year. Then, tap Delete. Messages older than the time frame you set will now be removed automatically.
  3. Next, let's clear out some chats that are taking up a lot of space. Go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Manage Account Storage > Messages. Now, tap Top Conversations.
  4. Tap Edit in the top-right corner and select the chats you want to delete. Then tap the trash icon in the top-right corner to delete a chat.
  5. If you aren't ready to delete entire conversations, open a thread, tap the contact's name at the top, and scroll down to Photos. Tap See All, then manually delete images and videos you don't need. Similarly, you can visit the Documents section to delete large PDFs and other files.

Clear Large Files From iCloud Drive

If you use iCloud Drive on any of your Apple devices, check it to ensure junk files aren't taking up much space. Open the Files app on your iPhone or iPad and tap Browse at the bottom. Select iCloud Drive and check each folder to see if you can delete anything. To do the same on a Mac, open a Finder window and click iCloud Drive in the sidebar.

However, if you accidentally delete the wrong file, don't worry. There is a way to restore deleted files in iCloud Drive.

Delete Older Emails

If you use Apple's Mail app and your iCloud email account, you'll likely have several emails you no longer need. Those emails can take up your precious iCloud space too. Here's how to delete them:

  1. Open the Mail app.
  2. Go to the Mailboxes page and choose iCloud.
  3. Select Edit in the top-right corner, then choose the emails you want to delete.
  4. Tap Trash, then select Trash Message.

Do note that this only applies to your iCloud email, not other email accounts—like Gmail—that you may have connected to the app.

Hopefully, you managed to free up a few gigabytes of storage space on iCloud by now. This should be enough to prevent the dreaded "iCloud Storage is Full" pop-ups on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac for the time being. But if you still need more space, consider upgrading your iCloud storage plan.