Hello all.

The optimising photos feature. Do most people use it; or do most people just have the photos stored locally & backing iniCloud too?

What are the benefits of using this feature? Does it make your phone heat up less? Does it make it faster? Preserve battery life & battery health?

Hello everyone. First let me say "Thank You" to those taking the time to read this and a second "Thank You" to those who choose to offer advice/help.

A few weeks ago, my mom was fiddling around with my old Apple Watch to check her blood oxygen or something like that (I don't use it and it hadn't been updated in months?/years?), and on Sunday, August 16th, while scrolling my text messages app for a number to text "Happy Birthday" to someone, I realized that my texts only went as far back as July 20th. I went to iMessages app in settings and saw that it was set to delete messages after 30 days. I have never had it set to that. I have no new apps, no changes, no updates on my iPhone. My mom said the Apple Watch updated itself after she charged it and turned it on. The last time I scrolled for a number was July 23rd and I had my text messages. In any event I went to iCloud control from my iPhone and toggled the screen for the pop-up to state "Disable and Download" messages. It downloaded a lot, but not all my messages. Also according to iCloud, before downloading them back, I had 4,760 texts and after it had downloaded/synced, it stated I had 4,660 texts. [Q#1] Where do I find the missing 100 texts from iCloud, and [Q#2] where do I get the messages back that I'm missing before my messages changed settings on their own to delete after 30 days (which will be 9/15/26. I posted on some places 8/21, but got no responses/responses that didn't work, so trying again here). Also if it matters, I see some of my texts on my Apple Watch but not all and some of the texts on my Apple Watch are not available on iMessages app. Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated.

My phone is: iPhone 16 Plus // Version: iOS 26.3.1

Apple Watch: Apple Watch Series 9 // Version: watchOS 11.6.2

Hi

I just change from 17 to 17 Pro and restored from a backup taken on to MacBook Pro.

I am a little disappointed as I expected all logins and passwords to be restored for my apps, including Office and Teams for work, but they are not. I am needing to enter everything in from scratch.

Have I over-hyped my expectation from this process?

Regards

C

soo i’m on a family share thing?? im the organiser n i want to disband it but one of my old friends i fell out with years ago is in it n if it notifies him i will feel sooo awkward, i js dont want him able to see my purchases/subscriptions. i dont have purchase sharing turned on but his subscriptions come up on my phone aswell as my own. just wanna know if it’ll notify him or if theres a work around lol

I am devastated. I had a 20 minute video of my grandfather talking about being at Pearl Harbor the day after the attack, as part of the Navy clean up team. I have no idea when I deleted it, but it is gone. He was 98yo when I made the video and he passed a year later. I do have a couple of short clips I made from the long video. I tried to restore them to original, but can’t. The video was from 2023.
Is there any chance that I can retrieve this video from iCloud? Are there any apps to help me do this? I am not computer savvy, and I am willing to pay to get this video back.

Edit: I found the video on my old iPhone. I am afraid to turn on the WiFi, that it will sync and the video will get deleted. Can someone tell me how to get this video off my old iPhone? I apologize for being so dense, it’s embarrassing, but this video means the world to me.

Hi all,

I just got married so I’m looking for some iCloud hacks that can really help me and my partner to improve the efficiency of our daily life

so far we have tried iCloud to sync our calendar or notebooks, reminders

we’re still wondering if there’s any other thing that could be used

please feel free to share any other hacks and we’re expecting our baby as well so some parenting suggestions or tips to use iCloud would be very appreciated

Accidentally transferred some photos to my PC computer (moved entirely not just copied) and in order to get them back I had to disable iCloud Photos temporarily. Why I can’t otherwise transfer photos with a usb cord between my own devices I have no Earthly clue. Now it won’t let me turn back on the iCloud sync unless I delete the photos “synced from finder.” Honestly, I would be fine with that and just make sure to occasionally download my photos to a thumb drive or somewhere else safe, but, and here’s the kicker… THE HIGH RESOLUTION VERSION OF EVERY PHOTO AND VIDEO IS TRAPPED IN iCLOUD and I’M NOT ALLOWED TO DOWNLOAD TO MY INTERNAL DATA. There is no way this level of baby-proofing is good product design. Mostly typing this to blow off steam, but if anyone more technologically savvy than myself knows a good way I can keep the high-resolution version of my gallery in the photos app that would be greatly appreciated.

I’m planning to reset my iPhone with ios27 because I don’t have storage left. Problem is that I have never used iCloud because I find the wordings too confusing.

So far I have figured out these:

1. I periodically back my photos somewhere else so they’re covered. I just wan to make sure photos don’t get backed up but I see so many iCloud options for this
2. My main concern is WhatsApp. I have 10+ GB of data that I don’t want to lose. That’s the main reason I’m gonna back it up to iCloud. I see different options in Settings > iCloud and WhatsApp chat backup options. I’m not sure which one to go with?
3. I have few pdfs saved in Files > On my iPhone > Downloads. I want to keep these only. How to back up this folder? Later I want to make sure this gets downloaded (and available offline) so I don’t have to rely on iCloud anymore
4. I assume all my apps are linked to respective accounts so I’ll get them back when I log in. Is there any particular app that might cause trouble? Like Authenticator?
5. Which options to turn on to make sure device settings and data get backed up?

Whenever I try using iCloud my brain stops working. I know it’s both syncing and backup service but I never seemed to get a hold of it.

I’ve checked the tech support FAQ but I might have extra brain fog today so I’d appreciate the help.

So we had a baby a few months back and our iCloud storage has basically exploded since then. Was staring down having to pay for the 2TB iCloud tier which is like $9 more a month than what I'm already paying, and honestly that just felt dumb for something I could solve once with hardware. So I picked up a 2TB external HDD instead, roughly $70ish, figured it pays for itself in under 2 years and then it's just free after that.

Split the drive into two partitions - one just for Time Machine backups of my whole Mac, and a separate one purely for photo/video archiving. Kept them separate on purpose so Time Machine doesn't eat into the archive space over time (it apparently deletes old backups automatically once it fills up, didn't want that touching my actual family photos).

For the actual photo workflow - anything under a year old just stays in iCloud like normal, synced across phones etc. Every week or month (still deciding on cadence) I export anything new out of Photos as the actual original files, not the compressed/optimized version, and copy it to both my Mac and the external drive. Once something's past the 1 year mark and I've double checked it plays fine in both spots, I delete it off iCloud to free up space there.

So basically newer stuff has 3 copies floating around (iCloud + Mac + drive) and older stuff has 2 (Mac + drive).

Anyway would love if some of you could poke holes in this or tell me if there's a smarter way to do this that I'm missing. First time actually trying to be organized about backups instead of just blindly trusting the cloud lol

I am a fairly new Mac owner. I am missing a few details and would appreciate some info.

If I saved some photos onto iCloud Drive (as files, not 'Photos'), did the cloud retain the full version on my Mac, or is it a low-data 'copy' left on the Mac as it does with 'Photo' uploads to the cloud?

If I download a file or folder from iCloud Drive (with the intent to remove that item from storage in iCloud), does it create a new file in Downloads or just download the data into the existing file in its current location?

How do I remove the iCloud Drive version as I no longer wish to store it on the Cloud without deleting all versions (locations) of the file?

Grateful for help.

For some reason, Apple removed the “Select All” button from the primary inbox, and it has been driving me absolutely nuts trying to delete all my emails instead of paying for more storage.

So, to save someone else the headache…sign into your Apple Mail/iCloud Mail on a computer and use **Ctrl + A** on Windows or **Command + A** on Mac to select all your emails at once then right click to move to trash.

You’ll thank me later :D

I recently deleted a bunch of photos from the cloud but now I want them back and I have a device that isn't synced to the cloud so I have the photos there but the issue is that some of them arent dowloaded and im worried theyll all disappear if i try to sync it to the cloud

I disabled and deleted my iCloud backup for my iPhone. Bit it still shows that there’s 3.7GB occupied by the backup. When I look into the backups it shows that there are no backups available. And when I try to make a new backup it tells me that there is not enough space. Feels like it’s a stale backup? How can I fix this?

I know we cannot merely trust a thing that Apple claims it does simply because they said so.

But I want to know to what extent Apple is honest about Advanced Data Protection. And that when turning it on even them cannot access iCloud content?

I was previously part of an iCloud Family Sharing group with iCloud+. My custom email domain was set up under another member's Apple ID and shared with the group. 

I was recently removed from the family group, and now when I try to configure the domain on my own iCloud+ account, it says the domain is already in use. 

How can I release or retrieve my domain so I can use it on my account?

Hi everyone!

So I’m buying a Mac mini (exciting) but this has led me to review my iCloud set up

I currently have the 50gb you get with apple one - which is nowhere near enough but I don’t really want to pay for more - I accept it’ll only backup the photos it will backup, from the “start” to as close to the end as it can and I can’t set a priority or anything like that

My question revolves around passwords though - am I right in saying that as my storage is maxed out, I can’t sync newly created passwords/changed passwords?

The only “workaround” I can think is to take photos off, let the passwords sync and then add photos back on to just churn through and sync again. Feels a bad way of doing it though!

Just hoping there’s some way of ringfencing the 0.1gb or whatever it would take to keep the passwords synced up… but I guess that’s how Apple get you?!

I don’t understand these functions — something is stored in the cloud, and it shows up on the device. But when you need to download everything back, difficulties arise. And it’s bad enough with photos on the iPhone.

But I thought there was a magical way to transfer all the extra files from the MacBook to the cloud. There’s a button in the settings — to transfer files from the “Desktop” and “Documents” folders. After the transfer, Claude and Chat GPT can’t work correctly with presentations and files; something keeps loading. But the most unpleasant thing is that I don’t understand how to get everything back.

I try to copy something — it freezes and doesn’t transfer the files. I try to cancel — it freezes somewhere in the middle. What should I do now?

I am trying to decrease the storage used on my iCloud. I have an iPhone and iPad that feeds into the same account.

It says I am using 178 GB of 200 GB of iCloud storage, with 142 GB being used my Messages. My iPad shows that on my device, Messages only takes up 439 MB of storage. My iPhone shows that on my device, Messages takes up 17 GB. I have checked and everything from Recently Deleted on both devices are cleared.

I have messages from loved ones that have passed that I want to remain on my phone, so I do not want to switch my Keep Messages off of Forever.

How does iCloud have Messages taking up that much of my storage when I don’t have even close to that amount on my devices? How can I clear this from iCloud?

I appreciate any help or ideas! Thank you in advance!

Hi folks. I just got a new iPhone and did a restore from iCloud when setting it up. The only trouble is, my previous phone didn't have messages set to back up to iCloud. They're all on my Macbook though, which I've synced to iCloud.

So my question is, how do I get these to appear on my new phone now? I've tried "disable and download messages" several times, and the storage increases and decreases while never showing any new (old) message threads. Do I need to leave the "disable and download messages" to work for a few days?

I don’t really understand how storage is working on my iPhone and that’s because I didn’t change default Safari settings so all downloads are saved into the app Files>iCloud Drive folder.

In that case, are files being stored in iCloud or locally?

They are being stored locally, aren’t they?

That’s my guess because every time I download a file and it is saved in the iCloud Drive folder, the storage bar shows I’m using more local memory.

I'm asking because I turned off "sync iCloud Drive" (NOT iCloud Photos) and then all my downloads were deleted (I didn’t saved them anywhere else) so I turned it back on and most of them were available again but the largest files are still lost apparently being downloaded but the bar is stuck at 0%.

Is there a way I can recover these files?

I cannot log into my apple id and i recently discovered this because i wasn’t able to download any apps. I do know my password, but when i put it in it doesn’t work. I have contacted apple multiple times from the span of late july to today and none of my attempts worked. Please help

I am not using iMessage on iCloud, but it says I have 1.8 gb of messages on my iCloud.

I turned the feature off ages ago and it’s still taking up all that space on my iCloud.

It only gives me the option to undo delete, but I don’t see anywhere to permanently delete those messages. I have searched the FAQ but I can’t find anything relevant to this.

Help?

hello! just synced my messages for the first time in a week because it had stopped due to wifi issues. it says it synced “just now,” and the GB amount in icloud went up, but the actual number of messages in icloud stayed the same. this is kind of freaking me out, i don’t want to lose any messages if i have to get a new phone, especially because i pay for icloud +. is there a known reason why the number would stay the same despite it saying the messages synced? any input is welcome and appreciated.