(phone rings)
(bouncy piano music) (Sarah sighs)
(computer rings) (Sarah sighs again)
(bouncy piano music) - Oh, hey Sarah. This came in for you. - Oh, thanks.
- No prob. (paper crumples)
(bouncy piano music) (frustrated sighs)
(bouncy piano music)
(Sarah sighs again)
- Yeah, this happens. Can I see your iCloud storage in settings? - Sure
- So, do you want to pay for more storage, so that you can save your iCloud photos?
- Not if I don't have to. I already have enough subscriptions, so.
- All right. Well, it looks like I have my work cut out for me. - Good luck.
- Thanks. (upbeat music)
This is a DVD. It's late 90s technology, that holds about two hours
of glorious standard definition video, or about 4.7 gigabytes.
Now, as of today, Apple's free tier of iCloud gives you more.
But, not by much, because it's only 5 gigabytes.
So, if you were to put this movie into your iCloud,
you'd get the notification. When iCloud came out, a week after Steve Jobs passing,
the space was mostly intended for iOS device Backups, or email, if you signed up for an iCloud email account.
So, 5 gigabytes was plenty. But now we've got iCloud Photos, iCloud Drive,
Messages in iCloud, and a host of other apps, all vying for your storage space,
which apple does a great job of managing, seamlessly, and transparently.
At least, until you run out of space at the free tier, which won't take long on a modern device.
And, when you do, they're all too happy to tell you about it.
And charge you anywhere between a dollar a month for 50 gigabytes,
to $10 dollars a month for 2 terabytes.
If you don't pay, you might end up like Fatemeh, from our previous video.
Which you should watch if you've missed. Who didn't have a backup when her iPhone,
fell into a lake. (iPhone drowning)
One obvious way to stop this notification madness, is to stop using iCloud.
You can't disable it outright, but if you go into settings, and then click on your
iCloud account name, you can easily identify
what's taking up all the space, and then select what you do,
or don't want to sync. Now, certain features don't count towards
your 5 Gigabyte piton, so there's no real reason to turn them off.
As for the rest, well, you need to make some tough decisions.
Personally, I love iMessage, and I don't ever delete messages.
So, my 5 Gigabyte allotment will be used to synchronize messages between all my devices.
But you might like your iCloud email, and decide that's what you want using that space.
I don't know what Sarah wants to use the space with.
(upbeat music)
Okay so, what do you actually want to save on your iCloud? - What about my photos?
- Can't do that. - Mm hmm. - You could save your messages though.
- No, don't need to do that. - Backups.
- Oh, sure. - All right. Sounds good. (soft piano music)
All right. - Now, I think we probably should deal with
what's taking up, all this iCloud. For Sarah, it's photos.
It's always photos. Back in 2013, it was the Camera Roll ballooning
iCloud Backups. Now it's iCloud Photos.
And if you've turned on Messages in iCloud, well, it's not the text.
There's probably a bunch of photos and gifs in there, taking up space, too.
So, if you don't want to pay Apple, you're going to have to save your photos elsewhere.
And that's not that straightforward. When you set up a new iPhone or Apple ID,
iCloud Photos is turned on by default, whether you like it or not.
If you want to pay for iCloud Storage, it's not a terrible service.
Allowing all the photos you take to be easily synced, and available, on all your devices.
But most people don't know it's turned on, and they could easily fill it up with one birthday party.
So, if you don't want to fill your free iCloud Storage, you'll have to turn it off.
And then, make sure you turn it off when you set up your new phone forever more.
Now, I'm sure you still want to save your important photos from your phone.
And before June of this year, the easy answer was Google Photos.
It gave unlimited storage of your iPhone Photos, and video, for free.
But, that's over now. So you have to consider a few other options.
The first, is lightening DVD Drive. Now, yes, it's less than 5 gigabytes,
but you can always grab more, by simply adding..
Obviously, I'm just kidding. Though, there is an app in into App Store
called Nero AirBurn. A good option might in fact be, Amazon Prime Photos,
which offers unlimited storage for photo uploads, but not for video.
You only get 5 gigabytes for those. Another option and shhh, don't tell anyone,
is that you might already have cloud storage with work, or school.
So if they use Google, you can use Google Photos the way you used to.
Or, if your organization uses Office 365,
One Drive supports automatic photo uploading, deep in the app too.
Just understand that it's not a forever guarantee because, God forbid you lose your job, or finish school,
or something. And it might be against policy or something, but shhhh, can be our little secret.
Another convenient alternative is iCloud Photo Stream.
It, is a service that predates iCloud Photos. Basically, it stores photos from the last month,
in the cloud, and downloads the last thousand of them to your other devices,
and permanently saving them, into your computer. The catch is that, you might not be able to use it
since it's no longer available with newer accounts. Sarah and I do have it available, but my sister doesn't.
So your mileage, may vary. And if you don't have it,
then you're going to have to manually plug in your phone into your computer,
and use the Image Capture App, or the Photos App, on both your Mac, and Windows, if you have a PC.
Now, if you don't have a at all, I do have one last solution.
It's one of these little flash drives,
with the lightning plug. This one is the SanDisk IXpand Flash Drive Go,
and it cost me $40 dollars for 128 gigabytes of storage.
That's the same as 13 months of 200 gigabytes of iCloud Storage, but this, I can keep forever.
It uses an included app that pops up prompting you,
to backup your photos when you plug it in. But I would describe the interface as mediocre, at best.
And it has one of the most dangerous pop-ups I've ever seen once it's done.
(somber music) Uhhh, what do I, do not delete.
So be very careful which button you press.
Ultimately though it does the job as a convenient way to backup photos, from your iPhone,
without relying on the cloud. And, if you need to, flip it over,
and it'll plug into any old USB port to transfer the files to another device.
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(upbeat music) - Okay so then, how do you wanna back up your photos
if you can't back them up on iCloud Photo? - Well, I already download them onto my laptop.
- Really? - Yeah. - Great. Now, before we delete the photos off iCloud,
we need to back them up to the iPhone.
Sarah has a lot of space on her phone, so she can fit the photos already uploaded to iCloud.
Since it won't be over 5 gigabytes, you probably will be fine too. But if not, you can download the photos onto your computer,
in the Photos App. You'll have to turn off iCloud Photos on all of your devices, anyway.
So, in Settings, go into iCloud, go to iCloud Photos, and then select download,
and keep originals. Once those have been downloaded, and you've copied them to your photo storage of choice,
you can click on the extremely scary, Disable and Delete setting.
Now don't worry, it only deletes the copies stored in iCloud.
(high-pitched sound) Some of your photos stored in iCloud
are not downloaded on this iPhone. These photos will be permanently deleted from iCloud
in 30 days. To avoid losing them, download and keep originals before continuing.
But I did that.
Why, is it saying this? (hands hitting the table)
(high-pitch voice speaking in background) We have to see what's on your iCloud.
So do you want to just.. - How are we gonna do that? - Just go to icloud.com and login, with your apple ID.
Okay, so you can click on photos. - Wow, I didn't even know this existed
to be completely honest with you. And I've been using apple products for my entire life.
- Congratulations. - Okay, Photos.
(Jonathan laughs) - It's blank. - There's nothing there.
- Some of the photos.. - Who cares? - Click on hidden. Yeah, I guess who it is who cares.
- Cause they are in like in my photos, on my laptop, anyways.
- I don't understand. - [Instructor] So you're comfortable
clicking Continue Anyway? - [Sarah] Yep. - [Jonathan] To delete everything off your iCloud. - [Sarah] Is that it?
- [Jonathan] Yeah. Now you have 30 days to undo it, if, you can't find a photo.
- Nice. (bouncy piano music)
- Now we'll want to turn on, Backups. Which, on Sarah's phone they are actually already on,
she just hasn't been backing up cause there's no space.
Okay, so I realized that a backup without photos might not seem useful, but it saves other things too.
Like Settings, Messages, Wi-Fi passwords, home screen icon layouts, and anything saved within apps.
It's that last one though that can end up causing some problems.
Thankfully, there is an easy way to trim your Backup down to size.
When you go into Settings, and you go to your iCloud, you can click on Manage Storage, and then click on Backups.
There, you can delete crusty old Backups, from long gone phones, or manage more precisely
what's getting backed up, even down to individual apps.
Let me show you on my phone, for example. Take the Burger King App.
It requires a king size 117 megabytes of backup space.
For what? flip the switch off, click Turn Off and Delete,
and I've saved myself a Whopper. Now, you can scroll through here,
and if there are any apps where you don't care if what you did in that app gets saved,
you can switch it off, and move on. McDonald's requires 89 megabytes?
And then Teams on my phone wanted over 500 megabytes.
If leaving out any of this critical data gives you anxiety, there is one other alternative.
Remember iTunes Backup? Well, it still exists.
But now it's found in the Finder Window, on your Mac.
In the Device Sync Management Page, merely select backup to your computer,
and it'll do the rest, as long as you have enough storage on your computer.
I recommend you encrypt the backup, since that allows you to include all personal information
like health data, just make sure you save the password somewhere.
This method can also be used on a PC, but it still requires the iTunes Windows App.
If your computer stays mostly on, you can click the sync with Wi-Fi button.
Which means your phone will back up when it's charging, and on the same network as your computer.
And you can always manually trigger a backup if you need to,
by clicking the Back Up Now button. It's important to remember that, if you are backing your
phone up to your computer, you should also be backing up said computer too.
Obviously Time Machine is an excellent way to handle this on a Mac.
And there are a plethora of supported drives ranging in price from very affordable USB external jobs,
to exotic and complicated network-attached storage.
All right, since this is done let's, bring it back to Sarah.
- Sarah - You're back. - I have good news.
I have whittled it down to 3.3 gigabytes. - Wow!
- You are now within your 5 Gigabyte allotment. - Oh my goodness! Thank you so much!
- How does it feel? - It feels amazing! - Great, yes.
- Ahhh. - Apple's 5 gigabytes of iCloud Storage, is a morsel.
It's really a free trial of Apple's iCloud Service and,
nothing more. You can get it to work, but it requires sacrificing a simple,
and integrated way to backup photos. And I think it's frankly shocking that there's no
automatic way of offloading your photos, onto your computer through, Wi-Fi.
Especially considering that iCloud Photo Stream appears to be, fading to black.
But, as long as you understand how iCloud works, it is possible to keep those notifications at bay,
without spending a penny, and still have safe storage, of your precious memories.
(upbeat music) Thanks for uploading to this Mac Address. Make sure to subscribe.
And, if you're someone who still isn't paying for iCloud Storage, give us a like.
I'm curious, if anyone else has been able to manage
their iCloud Storage, like I have.