Why do they make this so difficult?
Mac Address
·Mac Address
·2022-05-05
·
2,404 words · ~12 min read
0:01
(phone rings)
0:05
(bouncy piano music) (Sarah sighs)
0:08
(computer rings) (Sarah sighs again)
0:13
(bouncy piano music) - Oh, hey Sarah. This came in for you. - Oh, thanks.
0:17
- No prob. (paper crumples)
0:20
(bouncy piano music) (frustrated sighs)
0:23
(bouncy piano music)
0:27
(Sarah sighs again)
0:30
- Yeah, this happens. Can I see your iCloud storage in settings? - Sure
0:34
- So, do you want to pay for more storage, so that you can save your iCloud photos?
0:37
- Not if I don't have to. I already have enough subscriptions, so.
0:40
- All right. Well, it looks like I have my work cut out for me. - Good luck.
0:44
- Thanks. (upbeat music)
0:51
This is a DVD. It's late 90s technology, that holds about two hours
0:56
of glorious standard definition video, or about 4.7 gigabytes.
1:01
Now, as of today, Apple's free tier of iCloud gives you more.
1:05
But, not by much, because it's only 5 gigabytes.
1:08
So, if you were to put this movie into your iCloud,
1:12
you'd get the notification. When iCloud came out, a week after Steve Jobs passing,
1:17
the space was mostly intended for iOS device Backups, or email, if you signed up for an iCloud email account.
1:23
So, 5 gigabytes was plenty. But now we've got iCloud Photos, iCloud Drive,
1:28
Messages in iCloud, and a host of other apps, all vying for your storage space,
1:32
which apple does a great job of managing, seamlessly, and transparently.
1:36
At least, until you run out of space at the free tier, which won't take long on a modern device.
1:42
And, when you do, they're all too happy to tell you about it.
1:45
And charge you anywhere between a dollar a month for 50 gigabytes,
1:48
to $10 dollars a month for 2 terabytes.
1:51
If you don't pay, you might end up like Fatemeh, from our previous video.
1:55
Which you should watch if you've missed. Who didn't have a backup when her iPhone,
2:00
fell into a lake. (iPhone drowning)
2:04
One obvious way to stop this notification madness, is to stop using iCloud.
2:09
You can't disable it outright, but if you go into settings, and then click on your
2:12
iCloud account name, you can easily identify
2:16
what's taking up all the space, and then select what you do,
2:19
or don't want to sync. Now, certain features don't count towards
2:22
your 5 Gigabyte piton, so there's no real reason to turn them off.
2:25
As for the rest, well, you need to make some tough decisions.
2:29
Personally, I love iMessage, and I don't ever delete messages.
2:33
So, my 5 Gigabyte allotment will be used to synchronize messages between all my devices.
2:38
But you might like your iCloud email, and decide that's what you want using that space.
2:42
I don't know what Sarah wants to use the space with.
2:45
(upbeat music)
2:49
Okay so, what do you actually want to save on your iCloud? - What about my photos?
2:54
- Can't do that. - Mm hmm. - You could save your messages though.
2:58
- No, don't need to do that. - Backups.
3:01
- Oh, sure. - All right. Sounds good. (soft piano music)
3:06
All right. - Now, I think we probably should deal with
3:09
what's taking up, all this iCloud. For Sarah, it's photos.
3:14
It's always photos. Back in 2013, it was the Camera Roll ballooning
3:18
iCloud Backups. Now it's iCloud Photos.
3:21
And if you've turned on Messages in iCloud, well, it's not the text.
3:24
There's probably a bunch of photos and gifs in there, taking up space, too.
3:29
So, if you don't want to pay Apple, you're going to have to save your photos elsewhere.
3:33
And that's not that straightforward. When you set up a new iPhone or Apple ID,
3:38
iCloud Photos is turned on by default, whether you like it or not.
3:41
If you want to pay for iCloud Storage, it's not a terrible service.
3:45
Allowing all the photos you take to be easily synced, and available, on all your devices.
3:51
But most people don't know it's turned on, and they could easily fill it up with one birthday party.
3:56
So, if you don't want to fill your free iCloud Storage, you'll have to turn it off.
4:00
And then, make sure you turn it off when you set up your new phone forever more.
4:04
Now, I'm sure you still want to save your important photos from your phone.
4:08
And before June of this year, the easy answer was Google Photos.
4:11
It gave unlimited storage of your iPhone Photos, and video, for free.
4:16
But, that's over now. So you have to consider a few other options.
4:26
The first, is lightening DVD Drive. Now, yes, it's less than 5 gigabytes,
4:31
but you can always grab more, by simply adding..
4:35
Obviously, I'm just kidding. Though, there is an app in into App Store
4:38
called Nero AirBurn. A good option might in fact be, Amazon Prime Photos,
4:44
which offers unlimited storage for photo uploads, but not for video.
4:48
You only get 5 gigabytes for those. Another option and shhh, don't tell anyone,
4:53
is that you might already have cloud storage with work, or school.
4:57
So if they use Google, you can use Google Photos the way you used to.
5:00
Or, if your organization uses Office 365,
5:03
One Drive supports automatic photo uploading, deep in the app too.
5:07
Just understand that it's not a forever guarantee because, God forbid you lose your job, or finish school,
5:13
or something. And it might be against policy or something, but shhhh, can be our little secret.
5:19
Another convenient alternative is iCloud Photo Stream.
5:22
It, is a service that predates iCloud Photos. Basically, it stores photos from the last month,
5:28
in the cloud, and downloads the last thousand of them to your other devices,
5:32
and permanently saving them, into your computer. The catch is that, you might not be able to use it
5:37
since it's no longer available with newer accounts. Sarah and I do have it available, but my sister doesn't.
5:43
So your mileage, may vary. And if you don't have it,
5:46
then you're going to have to manually plug in your phone into your computer,
5:49
and use the Image Capture App, or the Photos App, on both your Mac, and Windows, if you have a PC.
5:55
Now, if you don't have a at all, I do have one last solution.
5:59
It's one of these little flash drives,
6:02
with the lightning plug. This one is the SanDisk IXpand Flash Drive Go,
6:07
and it cost me $40 dollars for 128 gigabytes of storage.
6:11
That's the same as 13 months of 200 gigabytes of iCloud Storage, but this, I can keep forever.
6:19
It uses an included app that pops up prompting you,
6:23
to backup your photos when you plug it in. But I would describe the interface as mediocre, at best.
6:28
And it has one of the most dangerous pop-ups I've ever seen once it's done.
6:33
(somber music) Uhhh, what do I, do not delete.
6:37
So be very careful which button you press.
6:41
Ultimately though it does the job as a convenient way to backup photos, from your iPhone,
6:46
without relying on the cloud. And, if you need to, flip it over,
6:50
and it'll plug into any old USB port to transfer the files to another device.
6:55
All right, time for a quick word from this video sponsor, Mine.
6:59
Now, what mine does is act as a data assistant that helps you discover what websites have your data,
7:04
and then help you exercise your data rights, and reclaim your right to be forgotten.
7:09
Begin by signing up, and with a scan, through your email, Mine will let you know how many companies,
7:13
are holding your data. Woof.
7:17
I'm counting 155 here, which could put me at a higher risk,
7:21
of having my data breached. Now, through the web, or my email,
7:25
I can send out an official Data Subject Request, and have it all removed after an identity confirmation.
7:31
It's available for free, but for limited time. So, make sure to check it out at the link below.
7:37
(upbeat music) - Okay so then, how do you wanna back up your photos
7:40
if you can't back them up on iCloud Photo? - Well, I already download them onto my laptop.
7:43
- Really? - Yeah. - Great. Now, before we delete the photos off iCloud,
7:47
we need to back them up to the iPhone.
7:51
Sarah has a lot of space on her phone, so she can fit the photos already uploaded to iCloud.
7:56
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,
8:01
in the Photos App. You'll have to turn off iCloud Photos on all of your devices, anyway.
8:07
So, in Settings, go into iCloud, go to iCloud Photos, and then select download,
8:12
and keep originals. Once those have been downloaded, and you've copied them to your photo storage of choice,
8:17
you can click on the extremely scary, Disable and Delete setting.
8:22
Now don't worry, it only deletes the copies stored in iCloud.
8:26
(high-pitched sound) Some of your photos stored in iCloud
8:29
are not downloaded on this iPhone. These photos will be permanently deleted from iCloud
8:33
in 30 days. To avoid losing them, download and keep originals before continuing.
8:36
But I did that.
8:40
Why, is it saying this? (hands hitting the table)
8:44
(high-pitch voice speaking in background) We have to see what's on your iCloud.
8:49
So do you want to just.. - How are we gonna do that? - Just go to icloud.com and login, with your apple ID.
8:53
Okay, so you can click on photos. - Wow, I didn't even know this existed
8:57
to be completely honest with you. And I've been using apple products for my entire life.
9:01
- Congratulations. - Okay, Photos.
9:05
(Jonathan laughs) - It's blank. - There's nothing there.
9:08
- Some of the photos.. - Who cares? - Click on hidden. Yeah, I guess who it is who cares.
9:12
- Cause they are in like in my photos, on my laptop, anyways.
9:16
- I don't understand. - [Instructor] So you're comfortable
9:19
clicking Continue Anyway? - [Sarah] Yep. - [Jonathan] To delete everything off your iCloud. - [Sarah] Is that it?
9:23
- [Jonathan] Yeah. Now you have 30 days to undo it, if, you can't find a photo.
9:26
- Nice. (bouncy piano music)
9:30
- Now we'll want to turn on, Backups. Which, on Sarah's phone they are actually already on,
9:34
she just hasn't been backing up cause there's no space.
9:38
Okay, so I realized that a backup without photos might not seem useful, but it saves other things too.
9:44
Like Settings, Messages, Wi-Fi passwords, home screen icon layouts, and anything saved within apps.
9:50
It's that last one though that can end up causing some problems.
9:53
Thankfully, there is an easy way to trim your Backup down to size.
9:58
When you go into Settings, and you go to your iCloud, you can click on Manage Storage, and then click on Backups.
10:05
There, you can delete crusty old Backups, from long gone phones, or manage more precisely
10:10
what's getting backed up, even down to individual apps.
10:14
Let me show you on my phone, for example. Take the Burger King App.
10:19
It requires a king size 117 megabytes of backup space.
10:24
For what? flip the switch off, click Turn Off and Delete,
10:29
and I've saved myself a Whopper. Now, you can scroll through here,
10:32
and if there are any apps where you don't care if what you did in that app gets saved,
10:37
you can switch it off, and move on. McDonald's requires 89 megabytes?
10:42
And then Teams on my phone wanted over 500 megabytes.
10:48
If leaving out any of this critical data gives you anxiety, there is one other alternative.
10:53
Remember iTunes Backup? Well, it still exists.
10:57
But now it's found in the Finder Window, on your Mac.
11:00
In the Device Sync Management Page, merely select backup to your computer,
11:04
and it'll do the rest, as long as you have enough storage on your computer.
11:07
I recommend you encrypt the backup, since that allows you to include all personal information
11:11
like health data, just make sure you save the password somewhere.
11:15
This method can also be used on a PC, but it still requires the iTunes Windows App.
11:20
If your computer stays mostly on, you can click the sync with Wi-Fi button.
11:24
Which means your phone will back up when it's charging, and on the same network as your computer.
11:29
And you can always manually trigger a backup if you need to,
11:32
by clicking the Back Up Now button. It's important to remember that, if you are backing your
11:37
phone up to your computer, you should also be backing up said computer too.
11:40
Obviously Time Machine is an excellent way to handle this on a Mac.
11:43
And there are a plethora of supported drives ranging in price from very affordable USB external jobs,
11:48
to exotic and complicated network-attached storage.
11:53
All right, since this is done let's, bring it back to Sarah.
11:57
- Sarah - You're back. - I have good news.
12:01
I have whittled it down to 3.3 gigabytes. - Wow!
12:04
- You are now within your 5 Gigabyte allotment. - Oh my goodness! Thank you so much!
12:09
- How does it feel? - It feels amazing! - Great, yes.
12:14
- Ahhh. - Apple's 5 gigabytes of iCloud Storage, is a morsel.
12:19
It's really a free trial of Apple's iCloud Service and,
12:23
nothing more. You can get it to work, but it requires sacrificing a simple,
12:27
and integrated way to backup photos. And I think it's frankly shocking that there's no
12:32
automatic way of offloading your photos, onto your computer through, Wi-Fi.
12:36
Especially considering that iCloud Photo Stream appears to be, fading to black.
12:41
But, as long as you understand how iCloud works, it is possible to keep those notifications at bay,
12:47
without spending a penny, and still have safe storage, of your precious memories.
12:53
(upbeat music) Thanks for uploading to this Mac Address. Make sure to subscribe.
12:57
And, if you're someone who still isn't paying for iCloud Storage, give us a like.
13:01
I'm curious, if anyone else has been able to manage
13:05
their iCloud Storage, like I have.