In a world where costs continue to rise, some readers want to cut their budgets. The iCloud+ price for 50GB ($0.99/£0.99 per month) to 12TB ($59.99/£54.99 per month) of storage plus other bonuses may not seem terrible compared to, say , streaming services or a fancy latte, but it’s not nothing. If you have a family using Apple devices and you use Family Sharing with an Apple One plan ($25.95/£24.95 per month for 200GB or $37.95/£36.95 per month for 2 To), the cost is more than trivial.
The real question is: can you get what you need without relying on iCloud?
For the purposes of this column, I’m using the 2TB sweet spot as a base, as it’s high enough to consider cutting it. Signing up for iCloud+ at 2TB costs $9.99/£8.99 per month, which can be shared with members of a Family Sharing group; The Apple One Premier plan ($37.95/£36.95 per month) can be used by an individual or a Family Sharing group, but it’s the only bundled plan with 2TB. (Members of the Family Sharing group family can only access their own storage, but their storage and yours all count toward the iCloud+ storage pool total.)
Consider the services you get with iCloud+ that you would lose if you reverted to the free 5GB iCloud base plan. A full list of related services is available on Apple’s site.
iCloud Photos
One of iCloud’s biggest selling points is the ability to sync your photos and videos across devices, backing them up and copying them as soon as you capture them on a mobile device or import them to a Mac. desktop, as well as keep optimized versions of the library to reduce storage on devices. It is difficult to reproduce this. You will need to regularly import media from mobile devices to a Mac or Windows system to avoid any risk of loss and ensure that you have excellent computer backups so that you can restore the media later.
An alternative is Google Photos, which can sync mobile photos to its cloud within the limit of storage paid for through your Google One account. Google offers 2TB for $99.99/£79.99 per year ($8.33/£6.67 per month when split), which can be shared with up to five other people. Not a huge saving.
To stop using iCloud Photos:
- On iOS or iPadOS, go to Settings > account name > iCloud > Pictures and deactivate Sync this iPhone/iPad Or iCloud Photos.
- On macOS, go to Photos > Settings/Preferences > iCloud and uncheck iCloud Photos.
In both cases, you will be asked to explain how to manage images stored in the cloud and locally. You will be limited by the storage available on your device.
iCloud Drive
If you never need to share files or if you only share relatively small files that all fit into 5 GB, you can use the free iCloud storage tier, the free Dropbox tier (5 GB), or Google Drive ( 15 GB). iCloud Drive also provides additional backup for files stored there.
It is possible to use computer software or network attached storage to create your own private file servers accessible over the Internet for synchronization and remote access, as well as sharing with others, but the cost and complexity involved apparently go beyond the desire to save money. an iCloud+ subscription.
To stop using iCloud Drive, go to Settings (iOS/iPadOS) or System Settings (macOS), then account name > iCloud > iCloud Drive. Disable Sync this iPhone/iPad/Mac. You will be prompted to explain how to manage files, just as you were with photos.
Other services
Other services you should consider managing without iCloud+ storage tiers:
- Messages in the cloud: If you enable iCloud for Messages, you can sync your message history for your iCloud account and associated SMS/MMS messages across all your devices. This can grow to gigabytes over time due to media attachments, like movies. There is no direct way to duplicate this, although running local backups using macOS will retain a copy of Messages data on an iPhone or iPad. You can also use Signal, WhatsApp, or other messaging services, but make sure you understand the security tradeoffs for each, especially with WhatsApp and the cloud archiving of messages you exchange with it.
- iCloud Email: Apple offers an email service like many other companies, and you can switch to another provider. If you fill up the available iCloud storage with emails and attachments, you can use the Mail app on macOS or third-party email apps to download emails and store them locally on your computer. Locally stored emails are subject to the same concerns about maintaining multiple, reliable backups of data.
- Contacts, calendar, reminders: These three categories of synced data don’t require much storage unless you add large attachments to entries, like PDFs or movies. You should be able to continue using the free tier of iCloud storage for all these needs.
- Lots of miscellaneous things: Apple uses iCloud to sync iCloud Keychain entries, as a conduit and backup of end-to-end encrypted information used by devices, to escrow a macOS FileVault recovery key, and much more. All of this represents very little actual storage consumed.
Once you’re sure everything is in place, you can use iOS, iPadOS, or macOS to downgrade storage in Settings/System Settings > account name > iCloud > Manage/Manage account storage.
Backup, backup, backup
Whatever data you stop syncing or stop having an additional central backup with iCloud, you need to make doubly sure that it is archived in a way that you can access it later. Even if the goal is to save money, don’t be foolish and wasteful because you’ll lose a lifetime’s worth of photos. Get an inexpensive, high-capacity external hard drive that you use for networked Time Machine backups; get in the habit of backing up your iPhones and iPads to a Mac every night, if possible; and consider an affordable and secure online backup service, like Backblaze, which has unlimited storage per computer for an annual fee.
This Mac 911 article answers a question submitted by igamesnews reader Chris.
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