Have you ever needed to get a new phone, but all of your photos, notes, and contacts were lost in the switch? If you’ve felt that pain—or want to avoid it—iCloud is your friend. If you make use of iCloud Drive or a paid iCloud+ plan, you can back up valuable information, documents, and images wirelessly to the internet, where it can be easily accessed and downloaded from all your devices.
Apple provides every user with 5GB of free iCloud storage. You can use this storage to back up apps, images, videos, or documents. But 5GB fills up fast; US users can get additional storage of 50GB for $0.99 per month, 200GB for $2.99, 2TB for $9.99, 6TB for $29.99, or 12TB for $59.99. As a subscriber to Apple One, you also get extra iCloud storage bundled with other Apple services, such as Apple Music, Apple TV+, Fitness+, and more.
What Does iCloud Backup Include?
When iCloud is used to back up your phone, you’re saving app data, Apple Watch backups, device settings, Home screen layout, iMessage, SMS, and MMS messages, photos and videos, Purchase history from Apple services, Ringtones, and your Visual Voicemail password. You can also select exactly what data is synced to iCloud storage.
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To do this, open Settings and tap your name. Choose iCloud and select Show All under Apps Using iCloud. Items like Calendars, Contacts, Health, Photos, Reminders, and Wallet can be enabled/disabled from here. If you want your photos and videos backed up, you’ll have to set up iCloud Photos. Open Settings > Photos and enable iCloud Photos to automatically upload your library to iCloud, including iCloud.com, where you can view and download photos on a computer.
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How to Back Up Your Device to iCloud
To automatically back up your device each day, head to Settings and select your name. Open iCloud and enable Back Up This iPhone. The device will then back up your data when it’s connected to power, locked, on Wi-Fi, and iCloud has enough storage space. Phones that support 5G may also allow you to use your cellular network. In this case, you can enable the Back Up Over Cellular option, if it appears.
Once iCloud Backup is enabled, you can choose to manually back up the device at any time by clicking the Back Up Now button that appears. This will immediately have iCloud preserve a new backup. Here, you can also see the last time your device was successfully backed up.
(Credit: PCMag / Apple)
How to Manage Your iCloud Storage
Note that you’ll only be able to back up your device if there’s enough iCloud storage space. To view the amount of storage in use on your account, go to Settings, tap your name, and then choose iCloud. Much like if you were managing on-device storage, there’s a graph showing how much space is available on iCloud.
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Tap the Manage Storage Account link to see a list of individual apps and services that are included in the backup. Each entry will say how much data it uses, allowing you to see what is eating up the most storage. To free up space, tap an entry and set the data to be deleted from iCloud. You can also manage your iCloud storage plan from this screen, if you need more space.
(Credit: PCMag / Apple)
How to Sync Your Photos and Files
Do you use multiple Apple devices? If you want the photos and files on your iPhone to also be available on your iPad, for instance, you’ll need to make sure that this is enabled on all devices. Open Settings and tap your name, then choose iCloud. Tap Photos and make sure Sync this [device] is enabled. Tap iCloud Drive and make sure Sync this [device] is enabled.
(Credit: PCMag / Apple)
You can also enable these options on your Mac. Open System Settings, click your name, then choose iCloud. Select Photos and enable Sync this Mac, then click iCloud Drive and enable Sync this Mac. If you have a Windows PC, you can import your photos into the Windows Photos app. You can also sign into your Apple account through the iCloud online portal, allowing you to view your synced photos and files from a web browser, and access your data from all your devices.
(Credit: PCMag / Apple)
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About Jason Cohen
Senior Editor, Help & How To
