Why My iPhone Backup Size Is Too Big: GT Explains

The Apple iPhone takes a backup of the phone and stores it in iCloud, the company’s proprietary cloud service that uses Google servers. Every iPhone user needs backup, file storage, etc. It will have 5 GB of free iCloud space used for While that’s enough space for most users, many users complain that they often run out of space because their iPhone backup sizes are too large.

This can be a problem for users with 5GB of free storage, and many are almost full. Also, this makes iPhone spend more time taking a backup and restoring any of the old ones. Here are some possible explanations and solutions for this strange issue.

Let’s start.

How to Check iCloud Storage and Backup

Open Settings > (Your Name) > iCloud. This is where you’ll see a visual breakdown of the storage in a graph.

Tap Manage Storage. You can change your storage plan. You’ll also see the Backups option and a more detailed list of apps iCloud backs up and their respective sizes.

Tap Change Storage Plan to check prices in your local currency. Tap on Backups to view details like last backup timestamp and size. It also shows a temporary detail of the next backup size.

iCloud’s contacts, calendars, pictures, videos, documents, your carrier app, etc. You will notice that it takes a backup of all kinds of data from different applications such as Need to make a backup of everything on your iPhone? Probably not.

What Items Should Be Part of Your iPhone Backup?

Review each application in the backup settings and reconsider whether you really want to backup that application. Usually this is not needed, as the application itself saves all data to the cloud. An example would be Facebook, which only requires an email id and password to access everything associated with your account. You don’t need to back it up. Games you no longer play or apps that are not important enough can also be disabled. A little prioritization should do the trick. You can always come back and enable backup for an app you think is important.

Return to Backups as shown above and under ‘Choose Data to Backup’ disable any apps that don’t need to be backed up. Tap on Show All Apps to view all the apps installed on your iPhone. Now, check if your iPhone backup is still too big.

Backup Media Files Separately

Videos and images are two items that can take up the maximum amount of storage on any device. In the section above, a screenshot of a Backup shows WhatsApp taking up more than 1.29GB of space on my iPhone. This is because I get lots of images and videos like everyone else. There may be other such apps on your iPhone which may result in large backup size.

I recommend using a platform-independent application such as Google Photos that will back up all photos and videos, albeit in a slightly lower resolution. It’s not that bad. You can always upgrade your Google Drive plan to have a backup of these files in full resolution. There are also other cloud-based services that can be used to store media files. This will help greatly reduce the iCloud backup size.

Another example would be iMessage attachments. Long threads or large attachments may be responsible. You should check if these large files increase iCloud backup size.

iCloud and iCloud Photos

There are two ways to back up your photos to iCloud, and only one is used by Apple at any given time. We have seen how you can make a backup of your photos to iCloud using the traditional backup option. This will back up everything along with what’s in the Photos app.

Another option is iCloud Photos. This is a sync service that will backup all photos as soon as you connect to a Wi-Fi service. You can access and recover these photos whenever you want. However, when you use the backup service, the photos are backed up every 24 hours. To recover photos from Backups setting, you will need to completely restore your iPhone.

Tap Photos under Settings and enable iCloud Photos here. There are other useful settings here that are pretty self explanatory. I recommend iCloud Photos as it will not only drastically reduce your iPhone backup size but also enable syncing and some additional options. Note that syncing will allow you to access these photos and videos on all connected devices, which is an added bonus.

You Must Add Documents to iPhone Backup

Documents such as PDF files, spreadsheets, and presentations can also take up a lot of space. They are absolutely essential and should be enabled in Backups. However, if you’re using Google Drive or Office 365, you don’t need to back them up. The former allows unlimited storage for such files even on the free plan.

The latter requires a subscription and must be used through Apple’s office productivity apps if you already have one. Of course, transferring from Apple’s ecosystem won’t be easy, but I would recommend these two over Apple’s package any day. Some good reasons are cross-platform compatibility, cost (free in case of Drive), and ease of use.

Delete the old backup and try again

Apple’s ecosystem is pretty closed so there aren’t many troubleshooting options other than that. Go back to the Backups section under Manage Storage as shown above and select your device. Here you can see how many backups there are.

Tap the Delete Backup button in red font and confirm. This should delete all specific backup. Restart your phone once and let it take a fresh backup. Check how much space it’s taking up and if it’s too big for your iCloud account.

You can make a manual backup under Settings > Your Name > iPhone > iCloud Backup. Tap on Backup Now.

in the cloud

There are many things that iCloud backups like iPhone settings, health data, app data and settings, ringtones, home screen folders, and app organization. Most do not need a lot of space. Often media files and documents are the culprit and it’s always a good idea to start your investigation there. Hopefully the issue has been resolved and you have managed to make a proper iCloud backup of your iPhone before the next iOS update arrives.

Next: Click the link below to learn how you can recover accidentally deleted files from iCloud Drive. We were all there. He hastily pressed the Delete button.