Save iCloud Storage By Managing Your Backups On Your iOS Device [iOS Tip]

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Yesterday we showed you how to conserve iCloud storage space by removing old backups from your iOS device. But what if you don’t have old backups eating up your storage, and you’re still going over your limit?

Today’s tip will show you how to manage your iCloud storage by disabling backups for selected iOS apps that you don’t necessarily need to backup with iCloud, quickly providing you with more storage for your important data.

A perfect example of this is with photos taken with the Camera app, which can quickly eat up space on your device if you’re a keen snapper. If you backup your images to iPhoto — or a similar application — on your Mac on a regular basis, you may not need to have your photographs stored in the cloud as well.

By disabling iCloud backups for the Camera app — and other apps that don’t need to be backup — you can take back a significant amount of your cloud storage. To do this, open up the Settings app on your device, then tap the ‘iCloud’ tab.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap ‘Storage & Backup’. Now choose ‘Manage Storage’.

Tap on the device you’d like to manage, and you’ll be presented with a list of apps you’re currently backing up to iCloud. Under the app’s name, you can see how much of your iCloud storage they’re taking up. For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that my Camera app wishes to use 2.8GB of my iCloud storage next time I sync.

 I’ve already synced all of the photos I’ve taken on my iPhone to iPhoto on my Mac, so I don’t want to back them up again. By disabling backups for the Camera app, I will save 2.8GB of cloud storage.

Scroll through your list of apps and disable all of those that you don’t want to backup. Simply toggle the switch next to each app’s name to off, then tap the ‘Turn Off & Delete’ button.

At the end of this process, you should find your iCloud backup size has quickly been reduced, providing you with more space for your most important data.

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