I use 120 MB of iCloud storage space for iCloud Backup of my iPad & iPhone. There is still 4.8 GB free from 5 GB, but I have a notification in iPad's backup window that I'm lacking space to back up to iCloud and would rather not buy more space to back up today.
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same happens for me....– Vladimir DespotovicDec 2, 2022 at 0:12
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4 Answers
This could easily be explained as the 120 MB of used data is likely for the data all the apps store in iCloud. Contacts, calendars, specific third party apps can have storage in iCloud. You can determine this by looking at the Manage Storage pane in settings app (see below).
The warning you describe comes up when the expected size of the next backup is greater than the available free space.
You can reduce the size of the expected backup on iOS (updated for iOS 16) as follows:
- open the Settings app
- tap your AppleID/iCloud avatar (first item, top of list)
- tap iCloud
- tap Manage Account Storage
- tap Backups
- tap the name of the device in question (it usually says this iPod touch, this iPhone or this iPad to help if you have many devices connected to iCloud)
- look at Next Backup Size
- toggle off any unwanted apps from the list below
If that is less than the available space, you may need to contact Apple support to have your account fixed on the server side. In most cases, you can toggle off the largest few items and then attempt a backup when the estimate is less than the available space.
Once the backup is complete, you can tune the backups or manage your space as needed on iCloud.
On iOS 15 I did have an open case with Apple. I have a 256 iPhone that refuses to back up to iCloud or a Mac with out of space errors and it’s not possible since the phone has less total space than either destinations have free. Once I enabled my support pin with them, it did show podcasts needed to back up 590 GB of data (on a 256 phone) so I disabled that from backup and then it backed up successfully. Once the "partial" backup was done, I re-enabled podcasts app to backup and it had a reasonable amount of space (less than 500 MB) and the situation was sorted while preserving all data to iCloud.
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2I'm on iOS 8, for me it was icloud>> storage >> manage storage >> Backups --> next Backup size:– HoneyNov 21, 2016 at 11:43
In my case, I have the problem that iCloud estimates my data usage to be 10.9GB, while I have chosen to back up maybe only 1-2GB. If I turn, for example, camera roll off or on again, it doesn't matter.
iCloud estimates this wild, high, far too much space to make a backup, and I even deleted my previous backup and started new, to be sure to 'reset' everything, but it doesn't help!
My iPad only uses 2.2 GB, I have 2.8 left for the phone, and select 'no backup' for most, but the mail and a few programs like Skype and so on, altogether far less than "10.9" GB, probably only 1-2GB.
This problem seemingly happened before, the iCloud backup grow out of control, like a classical Windows installation.
However, I now see that, as I deactivate more and more smaller applications, of a few kb size of their data, that the total usage decrease much more than these few kb which are stated for each app.
This means that Apple seemingly underreports how much data they backup, from each app, or maybe the system counts too much, I don't know.
It is not possible to deactivate all the apps at once, in the hope to get down to the 17MB which is stated on the first page, (e-mail and settings), so there will be a lot of job to make this work again... :-/
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I'm having the same problem. Just recently deleted and backed up again. It's showing as if I was backing up 2.7GB of data, but if you look at "Next Backup" it's shown much smaller, like 800MB. All the items I have sum those 800MB, but still the final backed up size is much bigger. Even deleting stuff from those 800MB, still got me near 2.2GB, but no less than that. Backups also take so much more than they should considering I've got good connecting, not so old iPhone and so little data… Jul 13, 2016 at 16:54
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2I had this problem forever. Went to the Apple Store to see if they had a suggestion, they just said buy more space... After messing around with this over the past year off and on when it annoyed me, I figured out that in my case it's because of my Messages history. Which doesn't show up in the Manage Storage> Info screen. I went to Settings > Messages and turn the message retention down to a year instead of Forever and it dropped from 8.3GB to 3.6GB. So that was my solution. May 10, 2017 at 12:58
The solution where you disable certain data from being backed up in iCloud is not really a solution but merely a workaround. Unfortunately, the real solution would imply you paying for iCloud's yearly subscription charges.
Or keep your iPhone backup out of the cloud an on your PC instead: There is not enough iCloud storage available. How to backup iPhone
Alternatively, keep the Camera Roll under iCloud backup settings disabled as that eats lots of space and back up your iPhone to your PC via iTunes. This way you don't lose the backup of your Camera Roll.
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I agree that disabling data buckets is a workaround, but it’s extremely effective for triaging when one specific container is corrupt and for preserving the data someone needs to get backed up before wiping a suspect phone and reloading the most important backup. Good points on local backup as another workaround or permanent alternative.– bmike ♦Jul 24, 2018 at 9:25
Are you sure you only need 120 MB for iCloud Backup?
Check the size of the 'next backup' in iCloud Backup on your device. Make sure that it's less than the free space of your iCloud account.Are you checking the storage of the correct iCloud account?
Make sure that you're looking up the free space of the correct iCloud account if you have multiple. Only the main iCloud account can be used for iCloud Backup — accessible through Settings → iCloud.
