Longtime Apple iPhone devotees and newly minted iPhone 4S owners alike just got a new operating system, iOS 5, and one of its major new components is iCloud, an online backup and syncing service.
That means all the apps, phone numbers, messages, calendar events, and other data stored on your iPhone can be saved and backed up to Apple's remote servers rather than your local computer. The same goes for data from your other Apple devices running iOS 5, like the iPad and iPad 2, iPod touch (third and fourth generation), as well as computers running Mac OS X Lion, such as iMacs.
If you own an Apple device, you definitely want to take advantage of iCloud. It has several incredible features, including the ability to track down a lost or stolen device (Find My iPhone, Find My Mac).
But when I set up iCloud on my iPhone, I found one major catch: I got 5GB of back-up storage space free, and out of the gate, I was already using 4.8GB! How could that be? I don't have that much stuff on my phone. I poked around my iPhone's Settings until I figured out how to customize iCloud to better optimize my free allotted storage. After about three minutes, I had gone from using 4.8GB to having 4.8GB remaining. Success!
Here's what you need to know to similarly free up space in your iCloud.
How to Optimize iCloud for iPhone
When you enable iCloud for iPhone, which is an option when first installing iOS 5 (see How to Get Apple's iOS 5), the service will automatically start syncing basic iPhone services like Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and more. Another choice at the bottom of the iCloud main settings page is Storage and Backup. Tapping into this feature lets you turn on iCloud Backup, which backs up your accounts, documents, and settings as well.
But what's not so clear is what shows up when you choose Manage Storage. Here, you'll notice that not only are the settings and such being backed up, but so are every one of your installed apps: Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, and all those free games and utilities you may or may not care about. Those were the culprits eating up most of my 5GB storage allowance.
Clearly, I didn't need to back up all my apps, especially the free ones that don't store anything of great personal significance. Sure, I want to back up and sync my to-do list app, Awesome Note (+Todo), but I don't really care if I lose information stored on most of the free apps that I have (and I've downloaded a lot of free apps in my day).
Admittedly, the option to tell iCloud which specific apps you want backed up is somewhat buried, but the chart below walks you through finding it, left to right, with detailed instructions below.
1. First, go to Settings and select iCloud. You'll see some apps here, but notice these are only the pre-installed Apple apps! We want to find all the apps.
2. Scroll down to Storage & Backup, and tap it.
3. Choose the third choice shown, Manage Storage.
4. Select the entry for your phone under Backups. Mine is named simply "Jill's Phone."
5. Here, you'll see a list of the top five storage-using apps. Scroll down and click Show All, and then select, app by app, which items you want to back up.
6. Decide which of your apps you don't want to back up; toggle those to "off." A red button reading "Turn Off & Delete" will appear. If you click it, you'll still have the app and its data locally on your iPhone; you're just "deleting" its data from iCloud's backup.
At the bottom of the screen, you'll see how much space you have available. If you can clean up your app backup, you should be able to better optimize that free 5GB. Of course, if you want to back up everything, you can pay Apple for extra storage space, starting at $20 a year for 10GB more.
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