I'm watching this video in complete awe of how good you are at explaining things. You have a combination of patience, intelligence, and clarity that's just out of this world.
I'm pretty good with tech, but I have always found iCloud far more confusing that (say) Google Drive or OneDrive. This was a really excellent, informative video that cleared up a lot of my questions. Well done, sir!
to be fair, icloud is much more then just a cloud for files though. If you use multiple Apple devices, Icloud does soo much more and it's really complicated.
@@jemand8462 Same as Google Cloud with Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Gmail, Write, Sheets, etc. You take a photo in a phone linked to Google Photos and you will instantly see it in any Google Photos app of other phones or Photos in Chrome on a desktop for example. Everything described in this video is possible with Google Cloud. OneDrive works similarly, where your Outlook, OneNote, etc sync seamlessly using OneDrive storage.
The way I explained it to my very old mum was " imagine you have a statue in the front garden, you can see it from the living room, dining room or bedroom. the view is of the same thing , just from different places. If I go in the garden and break its arm off, you will see its arm is missing whichever window you look out of.
Just one thing that’s missing the size of the window from you see through it (cellular data or Wi-Fi) sometimes you can’t never see the whole sculpture.
I'm a long time Apple user who randomly stumbled on this video and I can't believe how useful it has been! I didn't know about the "Remove download" feature. Could have saved me a lot of headache all these years. Many thanks mate!
I have been an android user for several years and just in the last month have bought into the Apple eco system. I watch your videos daily and would really be struggling without them. This video on iCloud was amazing and you answered so many questions, THANK YOU!
Turn back now, it’s not too late 🤣 jk. But genuinely curious if you stuck with Apple or not since it’s been about a year. I don’t know how many times I’ve pledged to myself “this is it, I’m done with Apple” only to cave and buy a new iPhone for simplicity sake.
Your explanation of the shared album changed the game for me. I have over 10,000 videos and pictures from my travels and I've never been able to organize them the way I want. I am very thankful. For this video because the information you gave me is going to simplify everything.
Careful with the shared albums though. The photos are not stored at full resolution and there is no way to get that resolution back. That’s a bummer and makes that „hack“ pretty much useless for me.
I watched the whole video from beginning to end (a miracle by itself), and consider it far more useful and informative than anything else I've watched on the subject. Up till now Apple iCloud was a mystery to me, and not a good one as I don't want to pay £10 each month for the privilege. I can now, with your help, start working on what I dó want. So, thanks a lot from a new subscriber!
Thanks for this. A point of clarification - Shared Albums do not count against your iCloud storage limits. Also, as someone else commented here, media is compressed to lower resolutions in a shared album.
Your videos are so clear, concise, and crisp. And they replicate the ease and intuitiveness of the Apple experience. The graphics/visuals are professional and clean. Really enjoy your channel.
Tip: you can have more than one Photo Library. One shared on the iCloud and one just local. To do this: open photo app while holding the Option Key. To go to a different library: close photo app and open it again with the option key
Good quality stuff. You talk clearly, you make your points, you do not scream, nor do you think you are cute. Most of all, the information content is high. You know what you are talking about. One of the best.
Great explanation as usual. I use iCloud as you describe but use pCloud for encrypted long term storage that I purchased a life-time subscription a few years ago. pCloud has a synchronization feature that can be turned on or off. I have my turned on. When I open pCloud on any of my devices including a Windows desktop, my photos, videos or other folders I have pre-tagged get uploaded quickly to cloud storage. When I delete stuff from iCloud, those files still live in pCloud. I can manually delete them there if I need to. So iCloud is only my ‘working’ storage vs pCloud as my true archive.
What annoys me about iCloud is the inconsistency between iCloud Drive and Photos. Photos consumes the majority of my iCloud storage, but also my devices' storage, which shouldn't be the case. They should remain separate. To do this Photos should act in the same way as iCloud Drive. You select a photo or video, download it from the cloud and when you need more internal storage, do the opposite of downloading it.
In settings -> Photos make sure you have optimise iPhone storage enabled this will keep all the full quality versions of your images on iCloud and a lower resolution version on your phone (taking up less phone storage) and once you click into an image or video it will attempt to download the higher quality version from iCloud
So I was pleased to see you doing this topic, as I was specifically looking to see if there was a workaround for the fact that Apple have recently stopped streaming photos to all devices, but then here you are explaining how by the time you get home from your walk, your pic will be available on all your devices…… What have I missed/misunderstood? Because photo stream has definitely disappeared from all my devices (and I pay for storage too) 🤔🤷♀️
They've disabled My Photo Stream, so you'll need to enable iCloud Photos now to experience what was shown in this video. support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201317
Great information! Thanks for you thorough explanations. One thing I'd love to see a video on is how to move from family plans to individual plans safely. Our daughter just got married so it's time to move her off our family plan, but we're trying to figure out how to ensure her photos are properly moved to her own individual account with her own storage WITHOUT losing any of her valuable photos. I'm guessing we're not the only family with this question so might be a valuable video! Thank so much for these great videos.
It is archaic lack of communication. Give 1 star to Apple. They do great tech and it is unacceptable this level of confusion for something we depend on
Excellent video - really useful and well explained. I am generally familiar with I cloud, but this filled in some gaps in my knowledge. Thanks for explaining it so well.
I’ve explored alternatives and realized iCloud is unique. Not storage by any means. Others do storage very well. What iCloud does for me is take away the fear of any of my devices suffering catastrophic failure or theft. It just doesn’t matter anymore and that’s a huge relief.
@@bennym1956 A copy at home is not practical for me as I have so many devices and constant changes. iCloud does all the work of synchronization and backup automatically which is exactly what I need. I used to maintain hard copies which was both time consuming and not at all secure, losing data all the time as a result. I keep hard copies only of archival data that is impractically large for cloud storage and is not subject to change, such as record projects that are finished, roughly 50TB in total, three full copies on HDDs . These two very different solutions have resulted in perfect security.
Very clear video. I consider myself as a power user and still got confused with iCloud. The most terrible feature about iCloud is the way it automatically decides which are the files that you frequently use and how it removes the local download to preserve space but without warning. I often work in remove areas, off grid, and found myself in the situation where I wanted to continue working offline on a file, only to discover that iCloud decided to remove it from my device (the dreaded cloud icon with down arrow)… This is extremely frustrating and shows that the system is really designed by Silicon Valley people that can’t imagine that some people in world need to actually work offline sometimes. Thanks for the video though.
I think the fact there is not a tier between 200GB and 2TB level is annoying. There should be a 500GB and 1TB tiers. I am fast approaching the 200GB limit but I don’t wish to move to the 2TB, it is to expensive. It is mostly my photo and videos over 10 years.
Thanks for this great video on this particular subject. Don’t know how you do it every time but it is so well explained, so clear and concise. Keep up the good work. You’re TOP in my book 🏆
Thank you, your clear explanation is just what I needed. I now realise that I was mixing up iCloud Drive and iCloud, believing the two to be one and the same. Now I have that straight, it is all starting to fall into place. Definitely worth a subscription 👍
Hi thanks for this video as always your material is well organised and explained, but still concise and very professional. One thing you didn't cover in the last piece on icloud+ is the Custom Email Domain feature? Would you be able to cover this? Thanks
Wow, thank you SO much! I have been using an iPhone since iCloud was introduced and never have quite understood iCloud! Apple definitely needs to get your video on their website - I’m sure they would get a lot more sign ups after people actually understand how to use the thing! Thanks
Thank you for your wonderfully detailed yet simple response to this subject. I am an older tech challenged grandmother. I look forward to your help with other challenging tasks as I stumble through the wilderness of technology….I definitely have a much better handle on my Apple iPad and iPhone. Will definitely be recommending your RUclips channel to all my Babybooming friends.🙏🇦🇺
WOW, what an AWESOME TIP YOU’VE GIVEN ME, regarding the Shared Photo-Album. Up until TODAY exactly this ISSUE (having 2 photos of the same if moved 2 another album) is (was) the GREATEST NUISANCE I‘ve had regarding the photo album. Greetings from Switzerland 🇨🇭
I just redid my iCloud storage plan as a result of this. Great explanation. Unlike most of you this stuff is far from intuitive for me, so this was a great help.
Good explanation. Apple's made it way harder than necessary to understand this stuff, insisting on using the same terms in several places when they have different purposes/rules. "Cloud" is a prime example. I bet if you ask 10 average users the difference between deleting a photo in the iCloud verses on a CloudDrive, you'd get 5 "no ideas" and 5 wrong answers.
Great video! You briefly mention that iCloud Drives tries to be smart with keeping/removing items from your device based on usage of that item. That is my biggest frustration with it, there are certain files I always want to be able to open locally on my phone from iCloud Drive, and not have to rely on having an internet connection for it to re-download, regardless of how frequently I may or may not open that file. There does not seem to be an option to “keep on device” or anything like that. Are you aware of any way to do this? Or is it just another missing feature?
I put all those kind of files in one single folder on iCloud Drive and regularly make a copy (and replace) of this entire folder to the “On my iphone” location, e.g. before I go on a holiday. Changes to these files still have to be made on iCloud or, when made locally on the iPhone on the road, copied back to iCloud later on. A bit cumbersome, but manageable.
The most confusing thing for me is Apple musical syncing. Music files that I manually added to the Musics app sometimes get a duplicate album from Apple in the library. Sometimes the file gets replaced. Some files that I locally added only are available on my phone and are greyed out on my Mac.
If you still buy CDs and import them, it’s annoyingly frustrating. I don’t want all the music files from my Mac on my phone, but I do want most. When manually syncing music, you can select all, to get a tick in every box, but then you can’t untick individual boxes. Having to tick 490 boxes individually because you don’t want all 500 albums to be synced is ridiculous. If anyone knows how to select all, then just untick individual albums, I’d be grateful to know. Back in the iTunes days, it was a simple case of Importing the CD, then dragging the album to your phone icon.
Very informative video. I have an iphone11 with 60gb of storage. I only have 5 gb left. Can I use additional iCloud storage (i currently have 50 gb of iCloud storage) to move items I don't want to have to delete (like photos and videos)? thanks, Paul
Great crystal clear explanation. Kudos. If you haven’t done a f/u video yet I’d like to see a deeper dive on Time Machine and how it backs up what stored on iCloud. For example if I remove a downloaded file from my Mac but keep it on iCloud does time machine back it up or not?
Very comprehensive. Thanks for all the info. 1 thing I don’t understand about Shared Albums - the uploaded 4K videos somehow only become 720p when downloaded from there at a later date. Same with photos. They drastically lose quality. What do you feel about this?
In that case I would just send the video as is to the recipient. If you thought you need a shred folder for yourself, you don’t need that every folder is shared with yourself if that was the question
Interesting that your video came along at this time, I just got a message from iCloud saying my storage was almost full. I've got 200 gigs and usually keep a pretty good eye on it but the culprit turned out to be 60 gigs of drone footage, problem fixed when I moved it to an external drive. thanks for the info.
While I don’t have a Mac, “yet”. I have the phone 13 and the iPad same. I find your videos extremely helpful and easy to follow. I was going to subscribe but couldn’t. I went to click and saw I already was. 👍I also like Payette Forward. It’s a shame we need people to explain things we do and use daily. I was not sure why I was even paying for the extra 50GB/month. But all the other features…yes! Sometimes we need a little explanation. Thank you!
Great video as always. Could you please look at family sharing, another poorly explained feature within the Apple ecosystem which has crossover into iCloud amongst other areas.
Although I’m very appreciative of your description of iCloud, I’m nevertheless extremely happy not using it at all! I hated all the data space I lost bc of it and the $ I had to pay for all the extra space I needed to buy! And I’m perfectly happy with different photos, videos, files, etc. in each of my 5 Apple devices with absolutely no sharing between them. If I wish to share a file or two between devices i can easily do it by airdropping them. I find I’m better organized this way and each device is always packed with space to play with! And most importantly, no more headaches!😊
An informative and well presented video. Many thanks. I've just started to use iCloud within a dual computer congiuration (iMac and MacBook Pro). Photos have been uploaded from my iMac and I'm about to do the same with the MacBook. Are there likely to be any conflicts/problems?
Very well explained. I was present when a phone rep was trying to explain this concept to someone in a phone store - android. Poor person just did not get it. Fortunately Apple provides great classes. Thanks for explaining iCloud Drive. I have not explored that, yet.
It's a shame that Apple doesn't allow you to delete photos from the phone and keep the uploaded photos in the cloud just like how iCloud drive does with the pdf files etc.
My problems with iCloud are: 1. These smart uploads/downloads are confusing and usually take up space on phones and on the cloud as well. Sounds stupid but it backups for example your desktop and stays original files. All work as one big mechanism for pushing me to pay more for storage. 2. When you want to share your work file, and asking your colleague to log in with his Apple ID - they don't like it. I've noticed that people easier use their Google accounts. Because of their warnings about security. 3. Additional e-mails that I can use in the iCloud Plus subscription will be unavailable if I will cancel subs in the future. It means that if I give someone this additional email - I can lose connection with him when something went wrong with the iCloud monthly payment. I completely understand this, but it aware me to use this function (that includes in subscription). A little bit stupid :(
Thanks Tim, but a couple of things you said are not true for me. Photos I take on my phone takes several hours to appear on my iPad, yesterday it was about 8 hours. Also contacts are disappearing from my iPhone but remain on my iPad while both look to be synced
I have a question about the storage of videos. What is the best place to store them iCloud, I have a lot but I want to access them at all times? Excellent video and now have a better understanding.
Just getting back into Apple after 10+ years, using windows, and Linux. I mostly use Google Drive for my cloud needs. One thing it has that I miss that iCloud doesn't do for some reason is streaming files. With Google dropbox and others, you can sync of course and use it like iCloud works, but you can also just stream the files if you don't want to take up space. I really like Mac however as a video, editor and large file collector for that matter. LOL... Not being able to swap an upgrade storage makes me feel limited. Of course there are solutions to a point. Being able to stream from Google Drive is a nice option I would love to be able to do with iCloud and Apple apps. Anyway, very informative video. Great stuff.
Very good explanation of iCloud. Thank you. But I still think Apple is not totally clear about how things work precisely. I will give you an example. When you are using an app which loads all its data from the cloud, let’s say RUclips, I feel it’s not necessary to let this app be part of your iCloud backup from the device it’s on. All the data the app is using comes from and is stored on RUclips itself, so a backup seems a bit strange. This way, more and more space is needed on iCloud to make a backup. Also, your backups always grow in size. I find that weird too. When I have installed new apps and I toggle them off in the backup, the size is never shrinking. Not once. But when I remove the backup and make a new one, I can save A LOT of space. Apple isn’t clear about whats happening here. What is it saving, what does it keep, what makes it grow. I can’t seem to get my head around it.
Please answer 🙏 my files app has 9 gb, so now i can’t backup my iPad to icloud because it’s exceed the 5gb limit, so how can i turn off the files app from being backed up to the i cloud? Big Thanks
Great explanation vid! This is why I think Google Photos offers a more convenient service for iPhone users. I can take as many photos as I like, and have them back up to Google Photos and then clear the photos from my phone knowing that they're backed up to the cloud. It's a shame that iCloud doesn't offer the same. I think this is arguably the most important feature (storage savings) for those who have a smaller capacity phone or want to reduce reliance on the storing photos on a single device.
It's not unlikely that Apple wants to nudge you into buying a larger capacity phone. I always opt for the lowest storage model and autobackup my photos in Google Photos and my files in Google Drive. I only use Icloud for Apple native services. In this way, I barely use any storage whatsoever on phone.
@@kasperkorea Agree with you on that but there's no back up service as an option which I think is questionable. Google Photos does make it easy enough to delete storage on phone once photos are backed up. How do you offload iMessages from your phone?
@@kasperkoreaI don’t use iCloud for my photos on my iPhone, and by far the largest chunk of my storage space is consumed by photos and videos; however my iPhone tells me I can save that big chunk of data by enabling iCloud for photos, so it seems it would offload to the iCloud and when viewing on the phone I am only viewing the iCloud photo
Great vid. I'm constantly surprised at how few people back up their iOS devices to their local computer. Everything is backed up and restoring is so much more convenient and complete than using iCloud. And perhaps the most important thing is that local backups are optionally encrypted.
Great simple explanation - as usual. Q: I backed up my iPhone on my iMacPro ticking back up to iCloud - however I noticed that my system drive was now approx. 250GB heavier than when I began? I’d assumed it would all be uploaded to iCloud (over time of course) but is it also stored on my iMacPro? A little confused. (BTW I also use an external drive with the iMazing software which I find reassuring)…any thoughts on this? Cheers. JPMusic
Thanks so much for this video! It really clears up a lot of misconceptions I have about iCloud.. My question is, does iCloud storage syncs with the computer's Documents and Desktop folder by default? Or do I have to manually upload stuff onto icloud drive like dropbox? Because if I go to my ICloud drive, i don't see anything there apart from stuff that i manually put in there. I'm asking because I'm going to have another apple device soon and want to have my data accessible in both my old MacBook and new MacBook
Thanks for the great video. I do have a few questions. If you sign up for iCloud and sync things like all of your photos, messages, etc with iCloud, does this use a lot more data on your cell phone plan? If it does, I was also wondering if makes your battery drop more quickly, and if it is possible to only sync over WiFi.
Good video as usual but I'm not a fan of the photo back up with iCloud. I'd rather have a system like one drive where I don't have to have it sync. I'd prefer to have the choice to upload to the cloud and remove from my phone. You touched on mail back ups using cloud mail, I use the mail app with my BT email account. Can I back those emails up to the cloud?
This was such a helpful video! Thank you! I’ve been juggling the 5GB free iCloud storage for so long, hoping to get my backup to work. I didn’t realize the next 50GB increment was so affordable.
iCloud is really cheap at £1 a month, compared to OneDrive on windows which at a minimum costs £1.99 for 100GB. And the fact that I can use iCloud Storage on my PC just as easily makes it really compelling as a cloud storage solution.
I have not activated the Desktop and Documents option in iCloud Drive to save space in iCloud Drive. Can I now copy 1 spreadsheet from my local hard drive to iCloud Drive instead of moving it so that this file remains on the local hard drive and also in iCloud Drive? If this can be done will a change in the spreadsheet I make on the local hard drive also be synced to icloud Drive????? I have tried but the change is not synced!!!! Thanks for help!!!
Small point (error?). At 8:07, you show a PDF that is 'stored locally on my Mac' on the Desktop. But if you look at iCloud Drive the Desktop is included within iCloud Drive anyway. In fact, you can see it within the window you drag it to! A better example would be a file inside the top level your Home folder. Such files are not backup up to iCloud. The Desktop, Documents, and Download folders are included in iCloud Drive. I created a @Dump folder inside my Home and use it to dump unimportant stuff, and periodically go through it and trash or move to iCloud.
I have a quick question then.. What is the difference between "Shared Photo Album" and a "Shared Library"..? Love your content, consider me a fan.. Keep up the great work. :)
Thank you for explaining iCloud, it makes a lot more sense now . I do have a question. I have my photos on my iPhone backing up to the cloud, I don't have it backing up on my MBP.. The photos on my MBP is almost the same as my iPhone. If I were to turn on iCloud photos on my MBP would it double the photos (duplicate) in the cloud. Please advise, Thanks
I'd give this video 5 thumbs up if I could. I have found Apple's iCloud quite confusing over the years. This video was an enormous help in improving my understanding. Thanks!
The problem is that icloud is a sync backup, so it does not give your phone more storage. If you delete photos in iphone it also deletes them in the icloud. Therefore I use google photos instead. They are still backed up when I delete from the phone. And the problem with icloud, its really not user friendly to share things with other people, especially people who dont have apple devices.
Hi. Thank you for the fabulous content of your posts. I have had a paid iCloud account for years on my iPhone. However, when I try to access older photos on my account, the folders are there but the pictures show as grey rectangles and do not download.
Very informative and detailed video. I find iCloud confusing but now I have a better understanding and hopefully I’d be able to use all its functions to my advantage. Thank you!
Thanks for this explainer! I’m an iCloud fan and user with an issue… My iMac/iCloud problem is that since I upgraded my iMac (Catalina) and started using Ventura any photography that I download to Photos don’t automatically show as they used to on my iOS17 iPad. Any clues?✌️
There needs to be a way to have an option to save ProRes or 4K video locally and not upload to the cloud. Those are just too big and I don't want to manage video in Photos. The workaround is to not have any syncing but I do want my photos to sync to iCloud.
Dear Honest Tech Producer I happened to stumble on Your video about iCloud. Thanks a lot for this very informative, interesting and highly Professional video. I‘m an Apple Eco-System user myself. I own 3 iPads, 2 iPhones and Airpods Pro. I‘ve got a question which I‘d be MORE THAN HAPPY to get Your help with an answer. I wonder if it‘s possible to delete one of my devices with all its backups, in order to add it again but with only the new backup. So that I can free storage on the iCloud. Please help me by answering this question. Thanks a lot
I'm watching this video in complete awe of how good you are at explaining things. You have a combination of patience, intelligence, and clarity that's just out of this world.
That's very kind of you
He lives up to his name :)
I'm pretty good with tech, but I have always found iCloud far more confusing that (say) Google Drive or OneDrive. This was a really excellent, informative video that cleared up a lot of my questions. Well done, sir!
to be fair, icloud is much more then just a cloud for files though. If you use multiple Apple devices, Icloud does soo much more and it's really complicated.
Eeew how? Google drive sucks big time
@@jemand8462 Same as Google Cloud with Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Gmail, Write, Sheets, etc.
You take a photo in a phone linked to Google Photos and you will instantly see it in any Google Photos app of other phones or Photos in Chrome on a desktop for example. Everything described in this video is possible with Google Cloud.
OneDrive works similarly, where your Outlook, OneNote, etc sync seamlessly using OneDrive storage.
The way I explained it to my very old mum was " imagine you have a statue in the front garden, you can see it from the living room, dining room or bedroom. the view is of the same thing , just from different places. If I go in the garden and break its arm off, you will see its arm is missing whichever window you look out of.
That’s a good way of looking at it!
Awesome explanation!! If I were a genie, I'd give you an extra wish for that one. The first wish would be on me.
@@TheKlyagcy (: wholesome vibes :)
Just one thing that’s missing the size of the window from you see through it (cellular data or Wi-Fi) sometimes you can’t never see the whole sculpture.
@@yunghiga3556 🤦 WOW just add mud to it. 😂
I'm a long time Apple user who randomly stumbled on this video and I can't believe how useful it has been! I didn't know about the "Remove download" feature. Could have saved me a lot of headache all these years. Many thanks mate!
Very good! Years ago, as a new Apple user, I learned the hard way that deleting photos on one device deletes them everywhere. Never again!
Me too, just lucky enough to have been able to retrieve them.😵💫 So glad to have found this man great channel.🙏🇦🇺
I have been an android user for several years and just in the last month have bought into the Apple eco system. I watch your videos daily and would really be struggling without them. This video on iCloud was amazing and you answered so many questions, THANK YOU!
Turn back now, it’s not too late 🤣 jk. But genuinely curious if you stuck with Apple or not since it’s been about a year. I don’t know how many times I’ve pledged to myself “this is it, I’m done with Apple” only to cave and buy a new iPhone for simplicity sake.
Your explanation of the shared album changed the game for me. I have over 10,000 videos and pictures from my travels and I've never been able to organize them the way I want. I am very thankful. For this video because the information you gave me is going to simplify everything.
Careful with the shared albums though. The photos are not stored at full resolution and there is no way to get that resolution back. That’s a bummer and makes that „hack“ pretty much useless for me.
I watched the whole video from beginning to end (a miracle by itself), and consider it far more useful and informative than anything else I've watched on the subject. Up till now Apple iCloud was a mystery to me, and not a good one as I don't want to pay £10 each month for the privilege. I can now, with your help, start working on what I dó want. So, thanks a lot from a new subscriber!
Thanks for this. A point of clarification - Shared Albums do not count against your iCloud storage limits. Also, as someone else commented here, media is compressed to lower resolutions in a shared album.
And it losts the gps data of where the photos have been taken
The quality goes down to 720p and I just figured this out the hard way!
In other words, don't upload to shared album and delete your original!
Your videos are so clear, concise, and crisp. And they replicate the ease and intuitiveness of the Apple experience. The graphics/visuals are professional and clean. Really enjoy your channel.
I teach older adults IT and to get them to understand icloud & Apple Storage is a minefield. you are so clear at explaining everything! Wonderful!
Tip: you can have more than one Photo Library. One shared on the iCloud and one just local. To do this: open photo app while holding the Option Key. To go to a different library: close photo app and open it again with the option key
Good quality stuff. You talk clearly, you make your points, you do not scream, nor do you think you are cute. Most of all, the information content is high. You know what you are talking about. One of the best.
Great explanation as usual. I use iCloud as you describe but use pCloud for encrypted long term storage that I purchased a life-time subscription a few years ago. pCloud has a synchronization feature that can be turned on or off. I have my turned on. When I open pCloud on any of my devices including a Windows desktop, my photos, videos or other folders I have pre-tagged get uploaded quickly to cloud storage. When I delete stuff from iCloud, those files still live in pCloud. I can manually delete them there if I need to. So iCloud is only my ‘working’ storage vs pCloud as my true archive.
What annoys me about iCloud is the inconsistency between iCloud Drive and Photos. Photos consumes the majority of my iCloud storage, but also my devices' storage, which shouldn't be the case. They should remain separate. To do this Photos should act in the same way as iCloud Drive. You select a photo or video, download it from the cloud and when you need more internal storage, do the opposite of downloading it.
That drives me mad as well.
In settings -> Photos make sure you have optimise iPhone storage enabled this will keep all the full quality versions of your images on iCloud and a lower resolution version on your phone (taking up less phone storage) and once you click into an image or video it will attempt to download the higher quality version from iCloud
Same. I deleted photos from my phone. I didn’t know I’d deleted them from my iCloud account too. So they’ve disappeared and gone forever 😢
@@laratheplanespotter i know this is obvious, but did you look in the deleted folder?
@@laratheplanespotter What do you mean you didn't know? It warns you when deleting pictures that they will be deleted from iCloud too.
So I was pleased to see you doing this topic, as I was specifically looking to see if there was a workaround for the fact that Apple have recently stopped streaming photos to all devices, but then here you are explaining how by the time you get home from your walk, your pic will be available on all your devices……
What have I missed/misunderstood? Because photo stream has definitely disappeared from all my devices (and I pay for storage too) 🤔🤷♀️
They've disabled My Photo Stream, so you'll need to enable iCloud Photos now to experience what was shown in this video. support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201317
Excellent! No BS overly dramatic, just the truth as to the purpose I'm looking for! This is getting harder to find on RUclips, so good props for you.
This is the best video ever!! It single-handedly answered my years long questions in the first few minutes !!!
Great information! Thanks for you thorough explanations. One thing I'd love to see a video on is how to move from family plans to individual plans safely. Our daughter just got married so it's time to move her off our family plan, but we're trying to figure out how to ensure her photos are properly moved to her own individual account with her own storage WITHOUT losing any of her valuable photos. I'm guessing we're not the only family with this question so might be a valuable video! Thank so much for these great videos.
It is still very confusing. Can i back up only some photos and can keep some photos on my iPhone?
It is archaic lack of communication. Give 1 star to Apple. They do great tech and it is unacceptable this level of confusion for something we depend on
Excellent video - really useful and well explained. I am generally familiar with I cloud, but this filled in some gaps in my knowledge. Thanks for explaining it so well.
I’ve explored alternatives and realized iCloud is unique. Not storage by any means. Others do storage very well. What iCloud does for me is take away the fear of any of my devices suffering catastrophic failure or theft. It just doesn’t matter anymore and that’s a huge relief.
Have a home backup !
@@bennym1956 A copy at home is not practical for me as I have so many devices and constant changes. iCloud does all the work of synchronization and backup automatically which is exactly what I need. I used to maintain hard copies which was both time consuming and not at all secure, losing data all the time as a result. I keep hard copies only of archival data that is impractically large for cloud storage and is not subject to change, such as record projects that are finished, roughly 50TB in total, three full copies on HDDs . These two very different solutions have resulted in perfect security.
Still clear as mud but very informative. I'm new to Apple and the ecosystem. Thank you for your content.
Very clear video. I consider myself as a power user and still got confused with iCloud. The most terrible feature about iCloud is the way it automatically decides which are the files that you frequently use and how it removes the local download to preserve space but without warning. I often work in remove areas, off grid, and found myself in the situation where I wanted to continue working offline on a file, only to discover that iCloud decided to remove it from my device (the dreaded cloud icon with down arrow)… This is extremely frustrating and shows that the system is really designed by Silicon Valley people that can’t imagine that some people in world need to actually work offline sometimes. Thanks for the video though.
I think the fact there is not a tier between 200GB and 2TB level is annoying. There should be a 500GB and 1TB tiers. I am fast approaching the 200GB limit but I don’t wish to move to the 2TB, it is to expensive. It is mostly my photo and videos over 10 years.
Thanks for this great video on this particular subject. Don’t know how you do it every time but it is so well explained, so clear and concise. Keep up the good work. You’re TOP in my book 🏆
Thank you, your clear explanation is just what I needed. I now realise that I was mixing up iCloud Drive and iCloud, believing the two to be one and the same. Now I have that straight, it is all starting to fall into place. Definitely worth a subscription 👍
You explained this very well! I am a well experienced user of Apple products and I wouldn’t have been able to explain this as well as you did. Nice.
Hi thanks for this video as always your material is well organised and explained, but still concise and very professional. One thing you didn't cover in the last piece on icloud+ is the Custom Email Domain feature? Would you be able to cover this? Thanks
Wow, thank you SO much! I have been using an iPhone since iCloud was introduced and never have quite understood iCloud! Apple definitely needs to get your video on their website - I’m sure they would get a lot more sign ups after people actually understand how to use the thing! Thanks
Thank you for your wonderfully detailed yet simple response to this subject. I am an older tech challenged grandmother. I look forward to your help with other challenging tasks as I stumble through the wilderness of technology….I definitely have a much better handle on my Apple iPad and iPhone. Will definitely be recommending your RUclips channel to all my Babybooming friends.🙏🇦🇺
WOW, what an AWESOME TIP YOU’VE GIVEN ME, regarding the Shared Photo-Album. Up until TODAY exactly this ISSUE (having 2 photos of the same if moved 2 another album) is (was) the GREATEST NUISANCE I‘ve had regarding the photo album.
Greetings from Switzerland 🇨🇭
@@andrejstemmle606 It’s not 2 photos. It’s only 1 but visible in both folders.
I just redid my iCloud storage plan as a result of this. Great explanation. Unlike most of you this stuff is far from intuitive for me, so this was a great help.
Well described and helpful. Now please explain iTunes music syncing for those that don’t subscribe to Apple Music 🤔🤷🏻🤷🏻♂️
Yes, and Music Match - how does that interact with iCloud’s music sync?
There's no iTunes anymore
@@ceasarsalad2055 yes there is on Windows PC
I hear ITunes is going and they are working on a better sync procedure for your own music
Good explanation. Apple's made it way harder than necessary to understand this stuff, insisting on using the same terms in several places when they have different purposes/rules. "Cloud" is a prime example. I bet if you ask 10 average users the difference between deleting a photo in the iCloud verses on a CloudDrive, you'd get 5 "no ideas" and 5 wrong answers.
Great video! You briefly mention that iCloud Drives tries to be smart with keeping/removing items from your device based on usage of that item. That is my biggest frustration with it, there are certain files I always want to be able to open locally on my phone from iCloud Drive, and not have to rely on having an internet connection for it to re-download, regardless of how frequently I may or may not open that file. There does not seem to be an option to “keep on device” or anything like that. Are you aware of any way to do this? Or is it just another missing feature?
I put all those kind of files in one single folder on iCloud Drive and regularly make a copy (and replace) of this entire folder to the “On my iphone” location, e.g. before I go on a holiday. Changes to these files still have to be made on iCloud or, when made locally on the iPhone on the road, copied back to iCloud later on. A bit cumbersome, but manageable.
The most confusing thing for me is Apple musical syncing. Music files that I manually added to the Musics app sometimes get a duplicate album from Apple in the library. Sometimes the file gets replaced. Some files that I locally added only are available on my phone and are greyed out on my Mac.
If you still buy CDs and import them, it’s annoyingly frustrating. I don’t want all the music files from my Mac on my phone, but I do want most. When manually syncing music, you can select all, to get a tick in every box, but then you can’t untick individual boxes. Having to tick 490 boxes individually because you don’t want all 500 albums to be synced is ridiculous. If anyone knows how to select all, then just untick individual albums, I’d be grateful to know. Back in the iTunes days, it was a simple case of Importing the CD, then dragging the album to your phone icon.
Very informative video. I have an iphone11 with 60gb of storage. I only have 5 gb left. Can I use additional iCloud storage (i currently have 50 gb of iCloud storage) to move items I don't want to have to delete (like photos and videos)? thanks, Paul
Great crystal clear explanation. Kudos. If you haven’t done a f/u video yet I’d like to see a deeper dive on Time Machine and how it backs up what stored on iCloud. For example if I remove a downloaded file from my Mac but keep it on iCloud does time machine back it up or not?
Very comprehensive. Thanks for all the info. 1 thing I don’t understand about Shared Albums - the uploaded 4K videos somehow only become 720p when downloaded from there at a later date. Same with photos. They drastically lose quality. What do you feel about this?
In that case I would just send the video as is to the recipient. If you thought you need a shred folder for yourself, you don’t need that every folder is shared with yourself if that was the question
great topic that i need fully explained..thank you..i really enjoy your channel :)
Interesting that your video came along at this time, I just got a message from iCloud saying my storage was almost full. I've got 200 gigs and usually keep a pretty good eye on it but the culprit turned out to be 60 gigs of drone footage, problem fixed when I moved it to an external drive. thanks for the info.
This is a helpful explanation for people of almost all levels. I knew most of this information but I still learned more.
I realise I thought I knew about iCloud but you make it obvious I didn’t , thank you …you are very good at explaining things
This was a superb presentation. My only request would be to explain how to make (non-photo) files on one’s iCloud drive accessible to others.
Brilliant. I can't say I fully understand iCloud. But I understand more than I did before listening, Well…time to listen again.
While I don’t have a Mac, “yet”. I have the phone 13 and the iPad same. I find your videos extremely helpful and easy to follow. I was going to subscribe but couldn’t. I went to click and saw I already was. 👍I also like Payette Forward.
It’s a shame we need people to explain things we do and use daily. I was not sure why I was even paying for the extra 50GB/month. But all the other features…yes!
Sometimes we need a little explanation. Thank you!
This video keeps getting better and better! a sidenote, I have never seen moved to the bin on my Mac neither here nor there, though.
If you're American it says "move to trash" found this interesting as well
@@sam------- oh of course. Thank you
Great video as always. Could you please look at family sharing, another poorly explained feature within the Apple ecosystem which has crossover into iCloud amongst other areas.
SUPER HELPFUL! I have iCloud and I didn't know about some of these! AMAZING videos! Love your channel!
Although I’m very appreciative of your description of iCloud, I’m nevertheless extremely happy not using it at all! I hated all the data space I lost bc of it and the $ I had to pay for all the extra space I needed to buy! And I’m perfectly happy with different photos, videos, files, etc. in each of my 5 Apple devices with absolutely no sharing between them. If I wish to share a file or two between devices i can easily do it by airdropping them. I find I’m better organized this way and each device is always packed with space to play with! And most importantly, no more headaches!😊
An informative and well presented video. Many thanks. I've just started to use iCloud within a dual computer congiuration (iMac and MacBook Pro). Photos have been uploaded from my iMac and I'm about to do the same with the MacBook. Are there likely to be any conflicts/problems?
Very well explained. I was present when a phone rep was trying to explain this concept to someone in a phone store - android. Poor person just did not get it. Fortunately Apple provides great classes. Thanks for explaining iCloud Drive. I have not explored that, yet.
Wait Apple provides classes? What do you mean?
@@StonedNoobYes. In Apple Stores
Yes. Apple stores.
@@ritagraham6703 wow I didn't know apple provides classes for consumers. Which country is this available in cause I haven't heard of it in europe.
Brilliant explanation of iCloud features! So nice to have an Apple presenter who does not bad-mouth Windows or Android.
It's a shame that Apple doesn't allow you to delete photos from the phone and keep the uploaded photos in the cloud just like how iCloud drive does with the pdf files etc.
I learn something useful from you EVERY TIME! Thank you!
That's the goal, so I'm pleased to hear it!
Excellent tutorial. Well presented and very useful information. Many thanks!
so impressive precise and concise content that can't resist to hit like and subscribed
your videos are so helpful! got 15 plus and i dont regret getting it:) thanks for this video
My problems with iCloud are:
1. These smart uploads/downloads are confusing and usually take up space on phones and on the cloud as well. Sounds stupid but it backups for example your desktop and stays original files. All work as one big mechanism for pushing me to pay more for storage.
2. When you want to share your work file, and asking your colleague to log in with his Apple ID - they don't like it. I've noticed that people easier use their Google accounts. Because of their warnings about security.
3. Additional e-mails that I can use in the iCloud Plus subscription will be unavailable if I will cancel subs in the future. It means that if I give someone this additional email - I can lose connection with him when something went wrong with the iCloud monthly payment. I completely understand this, but it aware me to use this function (that includes in subscription). A little bit stupid :(
Thanks Tim, but a couple of things you said are not true for me. Photos I take on my phone takes several hours to appear on my iPad, yesterday it was about 8 hours. Also contacts are disappearing from my iPhone but remain on my iPad while both look to be synced
There is so much good information here - on this New Years Day 2024 I just can't absorb it all. Awfully glad you "index" the items. Thanks.
I have a question about the storage of videos. What is the best place to store them iCloud, I have a lot but I want to access them at all times? Excellent video and now have a better understanding.
this is the best ad for Dropbox I've ever seen.
Thank you so much, I've been overlooking this feature for so long and never fully understood it.
Just getting back into Apple after 10+ years, using windows, and Linux. I mostly use Google Drive for my cloud needs. One thing it has that I miss that iCloud doesn't do for some reason is streaming files. With Google dropbox and others, you can sync of course and use it like iCloud works, but you can also just stream the files if you don't want to take up space. I really like Mac however as a video, editor and large file collector for that matter. LOL... Not being able to swap an upgrade storage makes me feel limited. Of course there are solutions to a point.
Being able to stream from Google Drive is a nice option I would love to be able to do with iCloud and Apple apps. Anyway, very informative video. Great stuff.
Very good explanation of iCloud. Thank you. But I still think Apple is not totally clear about how things work precisely. I will give you an example. When you are using an app which loads all its data from the cloud, let’s say RUclips, I feel it’s not necessary to let this app be part of your iCloud backup from the device it’s on. All the data the app is using comes from and is stored on RUclips itself, so a backup seems a bit strange. This way, more and more space is needed on iCloud to make a backup. Also, your backups always grow in size. I find that weird too. When I have installed new apps and I toggle them off in the backup, the size is never shrinking. Not once. But when I remove the backup and make a new one, I can save A LOT of space. Apple isn’t clear about whats happening here. What is it saving, what does it keep, what makes it grow. I can’t seem to get my head around it.
Great walkthrough however what was missing for me is Mac back up using iCloud. Disappointed this isn’t available.
Please answer 🙏 my files app has 9 gb, so now i can’t backup my iPad to icloud because it’s exceed the 5gb limit, so how can i turn off the files app from being backed up to the i cloud? Big Thanks
Great explanation vid! This is why I think Google Photos offers a more convenient service for iPhone users. I can take as many photos as I like, and have them back up to Google Photos and then clear the photos from my phone knowing that they're backed up to the cloud.
It's a shame that iCloud doesn't offer the same. I think this is arguably the most important feature (storage savings) for those who have a smaller capacity phone or want to reduce reliance on the storing photos on a single device.
Man, thanks for this comment.
It's not unlikely that Apple wants to nudge you into buying a larger capacity phone. I always opt for the lowest storage model and autobackup my photos in Google Photos and my files in Google Drive. I only use Icloud for Apple native services. In this way, I barely use any storage whatsoever on phone.
@@kasperkorea Agree with you on that but there's no back up service as an option which I think is questionable.
Google Photos does make it easy enough to delete storage on phone once photos are backed up. How do you offload iMessages from your phone?
@@ストラテジ I don't use iMessages much :)
@@kasperkoreaI don’t use iCloud for my photos on my iPhone, and by far the largest chunk of my storage space is consumed by photos and videos; however my iPhone tells me I can save that big chunk of data by enabling iCloud for photos, so it seems it would offload to the iCloud and when viewing on the phone I am only viewing the iCloud photo
Great vid. I'm constantly surprised at how few people back up their iOS devices to their local computer. Everything is backed up and restoring is so much more convenient and complete than using iCloud. And perhaps the most important thing is that local backups are optionally encrypted.
Awesome video! I learned more than I have in using icloud for 4 years!!
By far THE BEST iCloud video! Just subscribed
Great simple explanation - as usual. Q: I backed up my iPhone on my iMacPro ticking back up to iCloud - however I noticed that my system drive was now approx. 250GB heavier than when I began? I’d assumed it would all be uploaded to iCloud (over time of course) but is it also stored on my iMacPro? A little confused. (BTW I also use an external drive with the iMazing software which I find reassuring)…any thoughts on this? Cheers. JPMusic
Thanks so much for this video! It really clears up a lot of misconceptions I have about iCloud.. My question is, does iCloud storage syncs with the computer's Documents and Desktop folder by default? Or do I have to manually upload stuff onto icloud drive like dropbox? Because if I go to my ICloud drive, i don't see anything there apart from stuff that i manually put in there. I'm asking because I'm going to have another apple device soon and want to have my data accessible in both my old MacBook and new MacBook
Thanks for the great video. I do have a few questions. If you sign up for iCloud and sync things like all of your photos, messages, etc with iCloud, does this use a lot more data on your cell phone plan? If it does, I was also wondering if makes your battery drop more quickly, and if it is possible to only sync over WiFi.
Good video as usual but I'm not a fan of the photo back up with iCloud. I'd rather have a system like one drive where I don't have to have it sync. I'd prefer to have the choice to upload to the cloud and remove from my phone. You touched on mail back ups using cloud mail, I use the mail app with my BT email account. Can I back those emails up to the cloud?
Great video! Would you mind making another video about the iCloud advanced data protection feature? I want to know more about that.
This was such a helpful video! Thank you! I’ve been juggling the 5GB free iCloud storage for so long, hoping to get my backup to work. I didn’t realize the next 50GB increment was so affordable.
iCloud is really cheap at £1 a month, compared to OneDrive on windows which at a minimum costs £1.99 for 100GB. And the fact that I can use iCloud Storage on my PC just as easily makes it really compelling as a cloud storage solution.
I have not activated the Desktop and Documents option in iCloud Drive to save space in iCloud Drive. Can I now copy 1 spreadsheet from my local hard drive to iCloud Drive instead of moving it so that this file remains on the local hard drive and also in iCloud Drive? If this can be done will a change in the spreadsheet I make on the local hard drive also be synced to icloud Drive????? I have tried but the change is not synced!!!! Thanks for help!!!
At last!
An explanation that I can actually understand
Many thanks 🤩
Small point (error?). At 8:07, you show a PDF that is 'stored locally on my Mac' on the Desktop. But if you look at iCloud Drive the Desktop is included within iCloud Drive anyway. In fact, you can see it within the window you drag it to! A better example would be a file inside the top level your Home folder. Such files are not backup up to iCloud. The Desktop, Documents, and Download folders are included in iCloud Drive. I created a @Dump folder inside my Home and use it to dump unimportant stuff, and periodically go through it and trash or move to iCloud.
Very clear and precise explanation. Thank you! You just earned a sub!
I have a quick question then.. What is the difference between "Shared Photo Album" and a "Shared Library"..? Love your content, consider me a fan.. Keep up the great work. :)
Thank you for explaining iCloud, it makes a lot more sense now . I do have a question. I have my photos on my iPhone backing up to the cloud, I don't have it backing up on my MBP.. The photos on my MBP is almost the same as my iPhone. If I were to turn on iCloud photos on my MBP would it double the photos (duplicate) in the cloud. Please advise, Thanks
Very interesting as usual, you make everything easy to understand
I'd give this video 5 thumbs up if I could. I have found Apple's iCloud quite confusing over the years. This video was an enormous help in improving my understanding. Thanks!
Thanks for the kind words!
Great video. I'm already a 2 TB iCloud customer, but still it was very informative 🙂
The problem is that icloud is a sync backup, so it does not give your phone more storage. If you delete photos in iphone it also deletes them in the icloud. Therefore I use google photos instead. They are still backed up when I delete from the phone.
And the problem with icloud, its really not user friendly to share things with other people, especially people who dont have apple devices.
Hi. Thank you for the fabulous content of your posts.
I have had a paid iCloud account for years on my iPhone. However, when I try to access older photos on my account, the folders are there but the pictures show as grey rectangles and do not download.
Very informative and detailed video. I find iCloud confusing but now I have a better understanding and hopefully I’d be able to use all its functions to my advantage. Thank you!
Thanks for this explainer! I’m an iCloud fan and user with an issue…
My iMac/iCloud problem is that since I upgraded my iMac (Catalina) and started using Ventura any photography that I download to Photos don’t automatically show as they used to on my iOS17 iPad. Any clues?✌️
Hi Tom, just to tell you something I’m sure you alreadt know: Man, you are GOOD!
Greetings from a namesake in Buenos Aires
excellent topic thats been confusing me for a while - not any more! thank you
my english is not very good, but this is the best explanation of icloud I've searched
There needs to be a way to have an option to save ProRes or 4K video locally and not upload to the cloud. Those are just too big and I don't want to manage video in Photos. The workaround is to not have any syncing but I do want my photos to sync to iCloud.
iCloud is the main reason I enjoy the Apple ecosystem, and would never go back to Android phones and PCs.
This! it’s so much better than Google ecosystem
how is it any better?
So once you start playing are you on the hook forever? What happens to your data (above the free threshold) if you stop paying?
Dear Honest Tech Producer
I happened to stumble on Your video about iCloud.
Thanks a lot for this very informative, interesting and highly Professional video.
I‘m an Apple Eco-System user myself. I own 3 iPads, 2 iPhones and Airpods Pro.
I‘ve got a question which I‘d be MORE THAN HAPPY to get Your help with an answer.
I wonder if it‘s possible to delete one of my devices with all its backups, in order to add it again but with only the new backup.
So that I can free storage on the iCloud.
Please help me by answering this question.
Thanks a lot