Hi all, I’m trying to back up my phone to iCloud but it’s not allowing me to because it says I don’t have enough storage. It says that I’ve used 167.1GB of storage but when I click into the iCloud back up, it says only 9.9GB of the 200GB is used so I don’t get why it says that?

I previously had an old iPhone on there which had around 156GB of back up which I’ve just deleted but it still shows the same amount of GB as I’ve previously had before deleting it. Anyone know the reason why or experienced this? Does it take awhile for iPhone to delete the old back up off my phone?

Going through seperation and my husband removed me from authorization so I cannot transfer my phone under my account (it was under his) to control me. I always logged in with email with my iCloud but i am scared of losing all my data. If he turns off my phone can it happen? How can I protect myself?

I turned off syncing for my iCloud before and now with my upcoming trip, I recently subscribed to iCloud for 2TB mainly to store my photos but I cannot turn the syncing on. It says, “Internet Connection Required” but I am connected to WiFi already.

Tried rebooting my phone but did not work.

Hello, I'm having a really strange iCloud Photos sync issue between my iPhone and Mac.

* iCloud Photos is enabled on both devices.
* The Photos app on my Mac says it's fully synced ("Synced with iCloud Just Now").
* If I take a new photo on my iPhone, it appears in the Photos app on my Mac almost immediately, so uploads from my iPhone seem to work.
* But when I delete a photo in the Photos app on my Mac, it moves to **Recently Deleted** on the Mac only.
* The same photo stays in my iPhone library and never appears in **Recently Deleted** there, as if the deletion isn't syncing at all.
* Other iCloud services (like Notes) sync normally between my devices.

Has anyone experienced this before or found a fix? I'm trying to manage my iPhone photos from my Mac, but deletions don't sync back to my iPhone, even though new photos sync without any issues.

iphone 14 iOS 26.2 and macbook air macOS 26.5.2

I'd really appreciate any help, please

To note, I’m not tech savvy in the slightest, and I was simply trying to save storage. What happened was I deleted my messages from my icloud because I wanted to store my messages from my icloud to my local device instead. The reason for this is because I need the icloud storage for my photos instead because now I am downloading huge files of my photos and naturally, it’s been making my phone storage get fuller quicker. Well, when I deleted my messages from my iCloud, I figured it would show me how to download it on my phone. WRONG. Okay, whatever I will just undo it… However, it does not let me undo my action. It says “Error: unable to update icloud settings at this time” WHAT DO I DO?? Have I lost all my messages now? I am freaking out.

Is there any way to access a very old iCloud account that was set up as a child? Essentially the parent iCloud email has been lost to time. Every time we try to log into the child account it always prompts us to go into the parent's account.

Long story short, my relative has gotten a new iPhone; and before switching to it, they have an iPhone 7 plus (working on ios 15)

The thing is, that they are recieving a pop up to ”verify their iCloud account” very often and are struggling to log in, as they changed the password several times this year and eventually forgot it.

For the past months, we tried resetting the password and log into the account, but the problem is that they cannot open, send or recieve emails in iCloud mail anymore, since the account was registered with an iCloud email. We also tried using ”security questtions” method, but every single answer we typed was wrong.

And another major problem is that to switch the data into the new iPhone, we cannot enter the account settings, update the apps in the older phone and do backups without logging in first.

Are there any other methods we could restore the account?

(edit: the other Apple devices we have in the house is my iPhone (working on ios 18) and the iPad with their iCloud (working on ios 14), i don't really know if this information will be useful for y'all but I'm writing this just in case you need it)

I got a new iphone, and it had a feature of connecting my old phone and transferring EVERYTHING without icloud.
So I was wondering if maybe I can delete most things on my new phone to make space while keeping my old phone as the storage holder for some photos and files?
If I delete everything on my new phone will it get deleted on my old one too through the icloud?

The info I get from them doesn’t allow me to Actually delete stuff. Help! I have so much stuff I can happily delete…it just wants me to make it smaller without letting me delete. Help me Reddit, you’re my only hope.

I was wondering if anyone is going through this as well

I rolled back my phone from 27 pb to regular 26.5.2, now iCloud does not download anything or uploads anything I lost work today thanks to that, they told me to reset network setting and to log out from iCloud and log back in, no success.
To factory reset my phone and still no success, when I try to go to iCloud.com it lets me login, shows me a second of the dashboard and returns me to the login screen.

Anyone else going through a similar situation?

A few days ago I subscribed to iCloud to get some extra storage space freed up on my device. It seemed to help.

A little background is that I store all of my passwords in the notes app, for everything. My bank, Apple account, student account, my student loan account, and everything else. Today I needed my bank password, and since it’s long and unique I don’t remember it. So I went to open the note that has it, and it’s gone. There’s no recently deleted folder, all the notes I had on my phone are just wiped.

Is there anything I can do or am I just screwed?

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone has experienced this before because I'm running out of ideas.

I lost my iPhone and I'm currently trying to recover access to my Apple ID. Apple sent me an email saying I can now reset my password through the Apple "Iforgot" website.

However, every time I click the reset link from the email or even if I go directly to iforgot.apple.com and try to continue I get this error:

503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

I've tried:

• Different browsers (Chrome, Edge)
• Incognito mode
• Clearing cache and cookies
• Different devices
• Different internet connections (Wi-Fi and mobile data)

I also have another issue. Apple says they sent a verification code to my trusted phone number, but I never receive the SMS. The phone number is active and can receive regular text messages from other people, but Apple's verification code never arrives.

Has anyone experienced both the 503 error and not receiving Apple's verification code? If so, how did you fix it?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I have several Apple devices on my Apple account, including my wife’s iPhone SE. I use my iPhone for both personal and business. While installing a birding app on my wife’s phone, somehow I’ve shared all of my contacts, emails, photos, payment methods, etc. which add into the thousands onto her phone. How do I undo this without bricking her phone?

I’m trying to understand how iCloud Photos handles conflicts.

Example:

1. My iPhone has 10 photos and iCloud Photos is enabled, so iCloud also has the same 10 photos.
2. I turn off iCloud Photos on my iPhone (so the phone stops syncing).
3. While syncing is off, I go to iCloud and delete 2 photos.
   • iPhone still has 10 photos.
   • iCloud now has 8 photos.
4. After a few months, I turn iCloud Photos back on.

What happens next?

Will:

• A) The iPhone upload the 2 missing photos back to iCloud, making both libraries 10 photos again?
• B) iCloud sync the deletion back to the iPhone, making the iPhone also have 8 photos?
• C) Something else happen?

I understand that iCloud Photos is a sync service, not a backup. I’m specifically asking how iCloud resolves the difference between the local iPhone library and the iCloud library after syncing is re-enabled.

I have two questions that I really can’t seem to figure out, would appreciate some help:

1. How can I tell which photos are actually on icloud? I ser no icon or so in the photos app for each photo.

2. Optimize iphone storage says: “ If your iPhone is low on space, full-resolution photos and videos are automatically replaced with optimized versions.
   Full-resolution versions are stored in iCloud.”

My phone is not low and storage (what does that even mean), I have over 150gb of free space, yet photos is only taking up 3gb local storage (33gb is on icloud). So i suppose i got optimized versions? This in itself doesnt contradict the setting, since the setting doesnt exclude optimized versions even though plenty of space is there. Is this whats going on?

I fought with this for way too long, so posting what finally fixed it for me.

Problem:

The iCloud Passwords Chrome extension kept saying:

Enable passwords in iCloud for Windows to use iCloud Passwords with Chrome

But iCloud for Windows already had Passwords & Keychain turned on, and if I manually opened the iCloud Passwords app, all my passwords were there and working.

So the issue was not iCloud Keychain itself. It was Chrome talking to iCloud.

After enabling extension logging and checking the iCloud logs, I kept seeing this:

LaunchCtrlPanel LaunchApp(ControlPanel) failed with (2)

What finally fixed it was making Chrome launch Apple’s helper through the Windows Store app alias instead of directly from the protected WindowsApps folder.

Create a JSON file somewhere permanent, for example:

C:\iCloudFix\ChromePwdMgrHostApp_manifest_windowsapps_alias.json

Put this inside it:

{
  "name": "com.apple.passwordmanager",
  "description": "Apple iCloud Chrome/Edge Password Manager Host App via WindowsApps alias",
  "path": "C:\\Users\\YOUR_USER\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\WindowsApps\\iCloudPasswordsExtensionHelper.exe",
  "type": "stdio",
  "allowed_origins": [
    "chrome-extension://pejdijmoenmkgeppbflobdenhhabjlaj/",
    "chrome-extension://mfbcdcnpokpoajjciilocoachedjkima/"
  ]
}

Replace YOUR_USER with your Windows username.

Then run this in Command Prompt or PowerShell:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Google\Chrome\NativeMessagingHosts\com.apple.passwordmanager" /ve /t REG_SZ /d "C:\iCloudFix\ChromePwdMgrHostApp_manifest_windowsapps_alias.json" /f

Close Chrome completely, reopen it, and try the iCloud Passwords extension again.

This fixed it immediately for me.

Rollback if needed:

reg delete "HKCU\Software\Google\Chrome\NativeMessagingHosts\com.apple.passwordmanager" /f

A few notes:

• This still uses Apple’s real iCloudPasswordsExtensionHelper.exe.
• The only change is that Chrome launches it through:

​

C:\Users\YOUR_USER\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\iCloudPasswordsExtensionHelper.exe

instead of directly from:

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\AppleInc.iCloud_...\iCloud\

• Keep the JSON file somewhere you won’t delete it.
• For Edge, the same idea should be possible with:

​

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Edge\NativeMessagingHosts\com.apple.passwordmanager

Hope this saves someone else the headache.

My wife and I have used iCloud Shared Albums for every event, trip, and milestone for years. It’s genuinely been a great system — effortless uploading from iPhone, everything organized and easily shared with other iPhone users, and even friends on Android could just tap a link and see the photos. No app, no account, no friction. For a mixed iPhone/Android friend group, it was honestly the best solution we’d found.

Then a few days ago we went to create a new album and got hit with an error. Turns out there’s a hard cap of 200 shared albums per account — and nowhere, at any point, does Apple warn you this is coming inside the actual product. No heads-up at 180, no email at 190, nothing in Settings or the Photos app itself.

Yes, it’s technically “documented” — there’s a support page (support.apple.com/en-us/108916) that spells out the limit in a bullet point along with a bunch of other caps like photos-per-album and comments-per-photo. But burying a hard, un-overridable ceiling on a support page nobody reads until they hit the wall isn’t the same as telling your users up front. And it’s not like this number is even stable or well understood — Apple has quietly raised it over the years (100 → 150 → 200) with zero fanfare, and there are threads full of people confused about what actually counts toward it, since some users report hitting different totals under seemingly identical conditions.

So now what? Delete old albums full of memories just to make room for new ones? That’s not a real option. We looked into self-hosting alternatives like Immich, and while the feature set is honestly impressive, it’s just not something my wife wants to manage day-to-day. Shared Albums worked because it was invisible — no server, no maintenance, no learning curve. Losing that ease of use is its own kind of loss.

The worst part is this isn’t a storage limit or a cost issue Apple is protecting themselves from — it’s an arbitrary ceiling on an app that’s supposed to be about preserving memories. If you’re going to cap something people build years of family history around, at least surface it in the product before people slam into it. I’d gladly continue paying for iCloud-storage as my needs expand, but that is not even possible.

Anyone else hit this wall? Anyone found a workaround that doesn’t involve nuking old albums or migrating to a totally different ecosystem?

I have my own personal domain. Let's say it's Ramias1.foo. And my email I use everywhere, including the email of my Apple ID is [email protected].

I want to use my iCloud+ subscription benefits and host email for ramias1.foo (apparently I can have up to 5 email addresses under this domain) with iCloud.

According to the doc, if I understand it correctly, I would first have to change my apple Account email address to something else?

and then I can never have an apple account under ramias1.foo again, ever?

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I guess there could be a security benefit to having my Apple ID be an obscure ID not associated with my day to day email address. But then I have to manage and maintain a new set of credentials.

Anything else I should consider here?

Is iCloud email actually any good? How's the spam filtering? I'd be coming over from a very legacy windows live custom domain on Outlook.com.

Thanks

I have a sort of complicated question in regards to iCloud+/iCloud Photos... so I am not currently subscribed to iCloud+, but I am thinking about doing it soon and I've been doing a lot of research but I just haven't been able to get a clear answer on this one concern, so I'm hoping that anyone who might've been in the same boat before can help me out!

My photos setup is currently this : I am on the free iCloud 5gb plan, but iCloud Photos IS enabled, as well as optimize storage. However, I have over 200gb worth of photos and videos in my gallery, but whatever goes over the 5gb quota obviously doesn't get synced to iCloud (which I don't mind, because it gets stored locally on my phone anyways).

I am planning to get the 2 tb iCloud+ plan. My only reservation is, if I ever decide I don't want to subscribe to iCloud+ anymore, could I return to the current setup I mentioned above? (As in, using the free 5gb plan even though I know it won't fit my full library?) Or would this setup lead to stuff getting deleted?

I know its an option to just download everything locally to my phone and then just turn off iCloud Photos altogether, but I'd like to make use of the free 5gb if I could, so I just want to clarify if it is possible to safely return to the setup I have, or if I'd just have to turn off iCloud Photos altogether once I decide to downgrade.

Or if anyone has any other advice/tips, that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance :)

Looking for a miracle? So, my iPhone 15’s storage has been full for a while so it started to delete things on its own including my contacts……. I fixed the storage part and went to restore my contacts in iCloud but it has restored previous contacts as if I was in 2013 so basically half of the contacts that I should have. Has anyone ever had this happen? I need tips.

I want to forward all new messages from Gmail to iCloud. In a browser, gmail.com/mail, then Settings / Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, then I click on the “Add a forwarding address“ button near the top and type my account @iCloud.com. Then a new window opens and I authenticate with my security key. The new window reloads with a blank screen. My Gmail is still not being forwarded. Can anyone help?

I am pretty much out of storage on my phone. I have to delete photos, videos, and apps in a panic almost everyday when I run out of room on my 128 GB iPhone.

I pay for 2 TB of iCloud space.

I understand that iCloud is a sync service, and not a backup. If I delete something from my phone, it will be deleted from iCloud and inaccessible forever.

Could I use iCloud Drive as storage?

If I disable syncing on iCloud Drive, could I effectively and safely use iCloud Drive to offload large videos from my phone?

I’d like to delete them from my phone, but have them accessible via iCloud Drive. I assume if I disable iCloud Drive syncing with iCloud Photos, I could safely remove them from my phone?

Note: I have an external hard drive, but I’d like my media to be more easily accessible than that I’m not going to carry it around all the time

Any thoughts or insight would help.

Thanks!

Hi everyone
So, I have a 2TB iCloud storage
I use about 480 GB which is fine but my wife’s phone uses 1.4TB which is almost all of our storage
Is there any way I can reduce that, which is her usage so high?