Tech Support: Optimizing Your iCloud Storage

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley shares tips on managing your iCloud storage.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance "On the Move." We talk a lot about our devices, whether they be Android or iOS. But specifically for people with Apple devices, cloud storage is becoming more and more of an issue, especially once you run out of the free space. Dan Howley, how can I get the most out of my iCloud storage?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, never has there been a service that's both exceptionally convenient and annoying. iCloud storage basically lets us save anything we need, but then you get those really, really obtrusive pop-ups telling you that you're running out of space. But there are ways that you can save space to stop getting those and get even more.

So the first thing that you're going to want to do is actually delete some photos. Your photos are probably the thing that takes up the most space in iCloud. So to do that, what I want you to do is go into the Settings app on your device, and then you're going to want to go to Apple ID, iCloud, Media & Purchases. And this will bring you to an area where you deal to go into your iCloud tab.

And then once you're in there, you'll be all to see which apps are eating up your storage the most. If you go to iCloud, what I want you to do is un-tap the button that allows for constant iCloud backup. This will prevent your photos from continually uploading to the cloud.

It is incredibly important, though, that you take into account that once those photos are not uploaded to the cloud, they are staying on your one iPhone. And if they stay there, and you lose your iPhone, those photos are gone forever. So if you do decide to do this, you may want to back up to another cloud storage software or to your own computer. Just keep that in mind.

There's also a piece called My Photo Stream. That will automatically update every 30 days the photos that you've recently taken. They'll stay in the cloud. It won't count against your iCloud storage. And what you can do is just take that and then offload them to another device. And then the next 30 days rolls around-- you'll get a new 30 days worth of photos.

After that, the second biggest thing might be your old iCloud backups. This is basically when you have your iPhone or your iPad, you automatically back them up to iCloud. And that allows you to then get a new phone and then automatically download all of your data to that device. It also makes sure that if you lose your phone, all of your data is still in the cloud and not lost forever.

But if you had several iPhones or several iPads over the years, chances are, you've got a number of backups stuck in your iCloud that are just taking up space. So you want to go into that iCloud tab again and then go to Backups and look at the old ones and delete those. I personally have 14 gigabytes of space being taken up by old backups. But I use a lot of different phones, so that's outside of the norm. But for the average person, you may have one that's just taking up 5 gigabytes of space. Get rid of that, and you'll have more storage.

After that, I think the other thing to do is delete your old text messages. Believe it or not, these can take up a ton of space, between the photos, videos, GIFs, different things you send to each other. What you're going to want to do is go into that iCloud tab again and then tap Text Messages. You can delete all of your text messages from here if you want, or you can see your top conversations and then delete those as you see fit, depending on which have the most data taken up.

And then there are certain apps that are being backed up to iCloud that you just don't need. For instance, I use a photo editing app called Pixelmator, and that's taking up a ton of space. You could just turn those off in the iCloud tab entirely, and then they won't be taking up any more space anymore. Plus, some of these services have their own cloud backups that you can rely on.

And I think one of the last things that you're going to want to do, then, is buy more storage. Unfortunately, it's not what a lot of people want to hear, but it really is the easiest and most convenient way to do things. I personally subscribe to a 50-gigabyte plan with iCloud. It's $0.99 a month. I can save my photos online. It's not a problem.

If you need more space than that, there's also a 200-gigabyte plan, and that's only $2.99 a month. This is less than a Burger King meal. Or a Wendy's meal. Burger King's not as good. But I would suggest going with the 50- or 200-gigabyte plan. There's also a 2-terabyte plan for $9.99 a month. You don't need that. That's just way too much.

In the end, buy more storage, delete some of that old nonsense that you don't need, those backups and those text messages, and remember, you're going to want to back up those photos regardless.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Dan, now, I've got to ask you regarding photos. So this is an issue for a lot of us, because I'm looking at mine-- I actually have more docs stored in the cloud than photos, but Photos is next. But if I turn off Photos now on the phone, it will delete, but then it deletes all of the photos across my different Apple devices. How do you do this simply? Why don't they make it simple?

DAN HOWLEY: It's supposed to be simple. The whole idea of iCloud is so you can get your photos on any device. Now, if you delete or stop using iCloud, then you're going to lose those photos. If you don't want to lose them, you would just then download them to, say, your Mac or your PC or something along those lines, so they're in another device, stored there.

And I think that's really the big issue for a lot of people. That's why I say the best bet is honestly to just subscribe to iCloud storage.

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right. Dan Howley, a lot of people are going to be reading how to do this as soon as we wrap up.