How to Free Up iCloud Storage Space

Today I’m going to walk you through how to free up iCloud storage space. Using these tips will help you reduce the amount of storage space you’re using within iCloud.

Go to your Settings app and select your Apple ID.
Select iCloud and this will take you to your iCloud settings.
Click on Manage Storage. This gives you a breakdown of everything using storage space in iCloud (ordered from most to least).

Photos

We’re going to look at reducing Photos storage since that typically takes up a lot of storage space.

- You can turn off the option to automatically send photos to iCloud.
- Then turn on the option to Upload to My Photo Stream. Uploading to Photo Stream allows you to access your photos on your different devices but you have to make sure the Photo Stream option is enabled on your other devices.
- Pro Tip: Use Google Photos to store all of your photos. See my full tutorial here.

Backups

Select Backups and you’ll see the list of past backups that are stored in iCloud.
Removing the backups you no longer need will instantly free up space in iCloud.

Apps Using iCloud

Here you can see all the apps automatically using iCloud storage. If the toggle button is green beside the app, it’s using iCloud storage space.
Tip: The Mail app usually uses a ton of storage due to the volume of emails and attachments. It’s best to uncheck Mail if possible.
It’s a good idea to keep Contact and Calendars checked but you can go through your remaining apps and determine which ones don’t need to be using iCloud storage.
When you select to turn off an app, it’s best to select Keep on My iPhone–not Delete from my iPhone.