This is my trick to avoid the lack of space warning

If you’ve recently started using an iPhone or iPad, you may see this notice in the device settings: “You have reached the iCloud storage limit of 5 GB”. We’ve already talked about that 5GB falling short even for free iCloud accounts, but Apple is sticking to those limits for now.

Obviously, the best way to get rid of this warning is to sign up for an iCloud+ plan with more storage, but there are ways to do it without paying. Let’s see what they are.

The dilemma of backing up to iCloud and only having 5GB

If you tap the alert, you’ll surely get something similar on iPhone or iPad:

On the Mac, the notice looks like this:

What causes this warning to appear is the backup of the phone or iPad, which will be done automatically on the cloud if we do not configure anything else manually. touch Deactivate this backup and remove it from the cloud to free up space.

To do this, go to Settings and click on your name. From there, go to the “iCloud” section and click on “iCloud Backup”:

The device will ask you if you really want to disable copies. Confirm this decision to prevent the iPhone from trying to back up to the cloud. Now it’s your turn Delete the copy already made to free up cloud space. To do this, you need to go back to Settings > Your Name > iCloud and there click on “Manage Account Storage”:

Then click “Copies” and select one of the backups you want to delete (iPhone usually takes up more space):

Finally, click the last button to delete iCloud backup and free up space:

Now you’ve gotten rid of the notice pinned in Settings, but be careful: You no longer have a backup From the device. The best thing you can do is back up locally on a Mac or PC to protect your data in case of device breakage or loss.

Another alternative is to reduce the size of your iCloud backup, although you will already have to sacrifice some data. So I insist that the best option you have right now is to do a local backup.

If for some reason the low disk space warning still hasn’t gone away, you can check for other possible causes such as: B. an iCloud Drive folder with several GB of files in it or too many iCloud photos. Don’t worry, you can download these iCloud photos to Mac in just a few steps.

In Applesphere | What is iCloud Drive: how it works and what the Apple Cloud is for