A significant number of iOS apps optionally back up and sync through iCloud, too. Photos, productivity apps, Mail, Calendar, and anything you drop into your iCloud Drive folder in Finder on a Mac are immediately available across all your Apple devices. The main benefit of paying for more iCloud storage is that nearly all of Apple’s apps can seamlessly sync through it. These are all excellent features that help solidify our view that iCloud is by far the best choice for those who are all-in on Apple devices. There’s iCloud Private Relay, free storage for HomeKit enabled security cameras, a Hide My Email feature, custom domain names for iCloud email accounts, and additional contact options for recovering your account. These paid tiers are now branded ” iCloud+” and include several new benefits. It just means your whole family’s iCloud usage will count against the same storage limit.

You can enable family sharing on the 200GB and 2TB plans-if you do, it doesn’t mean your family members can see all your cloud stuff. It’s a good feature for those buying a new Apple device, but it won’t help you protect your data if your iPhone gets lost/stolen/damaged.įrom there, it’s $0.99/£0.79 per month for 50GB, $2.99/£2.49 for 200GB, or $9.99/£6.99 for 2TB. Since the fall of 2021, Apple has offered to “loan” you as much iCloud storage space as you need to backup and restore your data onto a new device, for up to two weeks. Apple is years overdue for increasing this limit (Google offers 15GB free), but at the very least, it should stop counting iOS backups against it. And I do mean all-in: All your computers are Macs, your mobile devices are iPhone or iPads, you work in Apple’s productivity software (Pages, Numbers, Notes), and so on.įrustratingly, Apple only provides a paltry 5GB of free iCloud storage, which isn’t so bad if all you want to do is store some Pages and Numbers documents, but is grossly inadequate for photos and videos. For example, you can use the Files folder on an iPhone or iPad to view all your files stored in the cloud.īecause it integrates so seamlessly with all of Apple’s products and services, iCloud really is the best cloud storage solution for someone who is all-in with Apple. It’s the easiest way for those bought into the Apple ecosystem (users of iPhone, iPad and Mac) to sync contacts, notes, files, photos and more across devices and access them on all their devices. It’s Apple’s own cloud-based storage system, and if you own an iPhone or iPad and have an Apple ID, you’ll have 5GB free storage. As an Apple user, you’ll have heard of iCloud, but we don’t blame you if you find it confusing.

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