How to Clear iCloud Storage

To clear iCloud storage, open Settings, tap your name, then iCloud, then Manage Account Storage. You’ll get a list of everything using space, biggest first. Work down that list instead of guessing.

On most accounts the order is Photos, then Backups, then Messages. Two of those three shrink far more easily than people expect.

See what’s using it first

This takes a minute and saves you an hour of deleting the wrong things.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap your name at the very top.
3. Tap iCloud.
4. Tap Manage Account Storage.

You’ll see a bar, then a list: Photos, Backups, Messages, iCloud Drive, Mail, and whichever apps store data there. Tap any row for the detail.

The number at the top is what you’re paying for. The free tier is 5 GB, which hasn’t changed since 2011 and is smaller than a single night out with the camera.

Recommended for You does the obvious deletions for you

Recommended for You is Apple’s own shortlist of things in your iCloud account you probably don’t need. Apple added it in iOS 17 and describes it in both Manage your iCloud storage and Manage your photo and video storage as offering to remove photos, large files and old backups.

Open Settings → your name → iCloud → Recommended for You, tap an option, and follow the steps. It’s the fastest thing on this page, because Apple has already worked out which items are safe to lose.

Two limits worth knowing. Apple frames it as a low-storage tool, so it may have nothing to suggest if your account isn’t under pressure yet. And it won’t touch the runs of nearly identical photos, which is where most of a full account actually is. Everything below is the manual version, in the order that returns the most space.

Backups: usually the fastest win

This is the one most people have never looked at, and it’s often gigabytes.

Under Manage Account Storage → Backups you’ll see every device that has ever backed up to this account. That often includes phones you no longer own. An old iPhone’s backup does nothing for you and can be several gigabytes on its own.

Delete the ones for devices you’ve replaced

Tap a device, then Delete Backup, for anything you no longer use. Be careful with the phone you’re actually holding: deleting that backup leaves you with no recent backup of it, so only do that deliberately.

Then trim the backup for the phone you do use

Tap it and look at the app list. Apps that store large files back those files up too, and you can switch off any that don’t need it. A game’s saved data is worth keeping. A streaming app’s cache isn’t.

Photos: usually the biggest

Photos is the largest item on most accounts, and it’s the one worth real effort.

Two things are true at once here, and mixing them up wastes time:

• Deleting photos on your iPhone deletes them from iCloud, because iCloud Photos is a sync rather than a backup. There’s no second copy sitting safely in the cloud.
• Deleting photos doesn’t free the space straight away. They go to Recently Deleted for 30 days and count against your storage the whole time.

So the sequence that actually works is: clear the photos you don’t want, empty Collections → Utilities → Recently Deleted, then check the number again.

Which photos to clear

The Duplicates album under Collections → Utilities merges exact copies for free, and it’s the right first move. What it leaves behind is the shots that are nearly the same: the burst of nine, the fourteen tries at one photo. Each of those is a genuinely different file, so your iPhone doesn’t count them as duplicates and leaves them alone.

That pile is usually much bigger than the exact copies, and the full guide to deleting duplicate photos on iPhone covers both halves of the job.

That distinction is worth holding on to, because the two problems get solved in different places. If what you’re short of is room on the phone rather than room on Apple’s servers, the method is different and it starts somewhere else entirely: see how to free up storage on your iPhone.

Messages: bigger than you think

Every photo and video anyone has ever sent you is in here.

Manage Account Storage → Messages shows the total. To bring it down, go to Settings → Apps → Messages → Keep Messages and change Forever to 1 Year. That one change clears years of attachments at once, and keeps clearing them from then on.

If you’d rather be selective, Settings → General → iPhone Storage → Messages → Review Large Attachments lists the biggest files people have sent you, newest first, and lets you delete them without losing the conversations.

iCloud Drive and Mail

Smaller, but easy.

iCloud Drive holds documents and anything you saved from other apps. Open the Files app, go to iCloud Drive, and sort by size. The usual surprise is old downloads and a Desktop folder somebody synced years ago.

Mail counts if you use an iCloud email address. Large attachments are the whole story, and emptying the Trash and Junk mailboxes takes seconds.

Then check whether you can drop a tier

This is the part worth doing deliberately, because it’s where the money is.

iCloud bills by tier, not by the gigabyte. Going from 190 GB to 140 GB saves you nothing if you’re on the 2 TB plan. Dropping from just over 50 GB to just under it saves you a monthly fee forever.

Check where you’ve landed in Manage Account Storage, and if you’ve crossed under a boundary, change the plan in Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → Change Storage Plan. Nothing does it automatically. You have to go and do it. How much iCloud storage costs covers which tier is worth being on.

Questions people actually ask

Why is my iCloud storage still full after deleting photos?

Recently Deleted. Photos you delete stay there for 30 days and count against your storage the entire time, so the number won’t move until you empty it: Photos → Collections → Utilities → Recently Deleted → Select → Delete All. Storage figures also update lazily, so give it a few minutes after that. Why your iPhone storage is full after deleting everything goes through the other causes.

How do I see what’s taking up my iCloud storage?

Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage. The bar at the top is your total, and the list underneath is every category, biggest first. Tap any row to see the detail, including which devices have backups and how big each one is.

What can I do if my cloud storage is full?

Two options and they’re both fine: clear space, or buy more. Clear space by working down the list in this article, starting with backups for devices you no longer own. Buy more in Change Storage Plan. The thing worth avoiding is doing neither, because while you’re full your photos stop syncing and your phone stops backing up.

Does deleting photos from my iPhone delete them from iCloud?

Yes, if iCloud Photos is switched on, and that catches people out. It’s one library mirrored across your devices, not a phone copy plus a safe cloud copy. Delete on any device and it goes everywhere, though it does sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days first, so there’s a window to change your mind.

Will I lose my photos if I stop paying for iCloud?

No, nothing already stored gets deleted. What stops is syncing and backups, and they start again once you’re back under the limit. Apple’s own advice is to get your usage under the new limit before you downgrade, not after (Downgrade or cancel your iCloud+ plan).

The short version

• Look before you delete: Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage.
• Delete backups for devices you no longer own. Often the fastest gigabytes.
• Photos is usually the biggest, and the shots that are nearly the same are most of it.
• Set Messages to keep 1 year instead of Forever.
• Empty Recently Deleted, or the number won’t move for 30 days.
• Check whether you’ve dropped under a plan boundary, then actually change the plan.