How to manage your smartphone’s cloud backup

A vital a part of proudly owning a smartphone as of late is managing the related cloud storage holding backups of your pictures, messages, contacts, and extra. Unfortunately, most individuals neglect this, usually to their detriment, when an ageing smartphone provides up the ghost, or a slipshod hand sends it rocketing to the ground, by no means to work once more.

As somebody who spent years working at a cellphone retailer (and who nonetheless serves because the resident IT man for family and friends), cloud storage usually ended up inflicting issues through the improve course of. With that in thoughts, it could be a good suggestion to examine in on your cloud storage, be sure you have house for your telephone’s backups, and extra. Here’s how to manage it.

iPhone

Every Apple ID comes with 5GB of free iCloud storage that can be utilized for backups, however chances are high you’ve already stuffed it with pictures and different storage-heavy content material. To clear up your iCloud from an iPhone, open Settings > Tap your title > iCloud. In this menu, you’ll see a breakdown of what’s utilizing up your storage, adopted by an possibility to manage your storage. Below are some apps that use iCloud, like Apple Photos, a Device Backups part, ‘Advanced Data Protection’ (which can allow you to encrypt your iCloud knowledge, though the characteristic isn’t accessible in Canada but), and at last a toggle to activate entry to your iCloud knowledge from the online. You may see adverts pushing you to improve your iCloud storage.

Tapping ‘Manage Account Storage’ brings up a listing of every little thing saved in your iCloud together with how a lot house is being utilized by that factor. Most of my storage is used up by Backups and Messages as a result of I disabled Photos backup (extra on that in a second). This record might be helpful if you’d like to filter out any massive gadgets — merely faucet an merchandise and faucet ‘Delete’ on the subsequent display screen to take away it from iCloud. You may also broaden your iCloud storage from this display screen with the next choices and costs in Canada (as of January sixth, 2023):

• 50GB – $1.29/mo
• 200GB – $3.99/mo
• 2TB – $12.99/mo

Paying for iCloud additionally provides you entry to iCloud+ options like Private Relay, Hide My Email, and extra — study these right here.

iCloud Photos will seemingly be the factor gobbling up most of your iCloud storage. It’s a system for backing up pictures and movies from your iPhone and it’s a good way to defend your footage within the occasion you break or lose your iPhone. As I discussed above, I don’t use iCloud to again up my footage as a result of I want Google Photos and I primarily use Android telephones. If you don’t need to again up pictures to iCloud, you’ll be able to flip this characteristic off (however I’d strongly suggest utilizing one other backup service to defend your footage, whether or not that’s Google Photos, Microsoft OneDrive, or one thing else).

Most importantly, examine the Device Backups part to guarantee your iPhone is backing up to iCloud. This will make it simpler to restore your knowledge on a brand new iPhone.

Android

Android’s backup system is pretty complicated, thanks partly to producers providing their very own backup techniques on prime of what’s accessible as a part of Android. My advice is to be certain the Android backup system is about up and good to go first, after which look into organising the producer backup system (for instance, Samsung Cloud backup for Galaxy telephones).

You can manage your backups from two locations on Android. The first is thru the Google One app, and the second is by heading into the Settings app and going to the ‘Backup’ part. It could be in a unique spot relying on your telephone — on my Pixel 7, it’s in Settings > System > Backup, whereas on a Galaxy S10e I checked it was in Settings > Accounts and backup > Back up knowledge beneath the Google Drive header.

Regardless, you must find yourself on a display screen displaying your Google account storage, an possibility to manage the storage, after which backup particulars for your gadget, together with a ‘Back up now’ button and a listing of what’s included within the backup and the way a lot house it takes up.

Android backups are saved in Google One cloud storage, which is shared throughout varied Google companies, together with Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos (it’s price noting that whereas pictures are listed within the gadget backup part, the Google Photos app handles the backup). You get 15GB at no cost and may improve your storage to:

• 100GB – $2.79/mo or $27.99/yr
• 200GB – $3.99/mo or $39.99/yr
• 2TB – $13.99/mo or $139.99/yr

Controlling what will get backed up and what doesn’t is a bit more complicated than it’s with the iPhone. In the Backup menu in my telephone’s Settings app, I might solely view a listing of what was backed up. However, should you head into the Google One app to view your backup, there’s a ‘Manage backup’ button that takes you to a menu with choices to toggle off sure classes, reminiscent of gadget knowledge, multimedia messages, or pictures and movies. However, different elements of the Android backup interface will bounce you to Google Photos to manage what will get backed up.

Again, your photograph library will in all probability take up probably the most house in your gadget backup, so having the ability to manage that individually is crucial factor — not one of the different stuff in my backup takes greater than 100MB of house.