[Answered] Why iCloud Backup too Large on iPhone?

You may be surprised by the large iCloud backup size on your iPhone. Why it is so huge and how can you reduce it? Find detailed answer and guide in this passage.

Demi

By Demi / Updated on December 5, 2023

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iCloud backup too big

As the title states, I’m having problems with iCloud. I believe the phone should be able to be backed up to iCloud without paying for it and recently the iPhone backup keeps ballooning. I went in and disabled 100% of the apps from being backed up and my backup size is still over 7.8 GB. Any idea why?

- Question from Apple Community

You can easily create an iCloud backup on iPhone by visiting the Settings app to keep your iPhone data safe. You can also be free to restore the backup to a new iPhone. While you may at least once be astonished by your iCloud backup size. Why the iPhone iCloud backup is too large?

iCloud logo

In this guide, we’ll explain to you the common reason why iCloud backup is too large, the way to reduce iCloud backup size, and everything you may be concerned about iCloud.

Part 1. Why iPhone iCloud backup too large

If you want to figure out why iCloud backup is too large, you may need to learn about what gets backed up. When you go to the Settings app > your account > iCloud > Manage Storage > Backups > Choose your iPhone, and you will see a long list that iCloud attempts to backup.

Check iCloud Backup Size

Besides, you can also see the backup size for each item on the list. It can better explain why your iCloud Storage is full in a short time and your iCloud backup size appears to be so huge.

What takes up too much space in iCloud
You may not realize it, but it really happened that messages and photos take up too much space in iCloud.

No matter what messaging apps you are using, iCloud will backup not only the conversations, but also all photos and videos you’ve received from your friends. If you don’t want to delete all your conversations, at least you should remove some long videos and irrelevant photos, like the sandwich your friends made for lunch last week. You probably don’t have to backup things like that to your iCloud.

As for photos, since iPhone takes high-quality photos, the free space in iCloud can easily be full of them.

Part 2. How to reduce iCloud backup size

If you find iCloud has got a huge backup size, you can choose to reduce it by deleting and removing data that you no longer want from your iCloud backup, such as old iCloud Backups, Messages, and other apps that backup data on iCloud. Here are the detailed steps to reduce huge iCloud backup.

To delete old iCloud Backups, go to the Settings app > Tap [your name] > Choose iCloud > Manage Storage.

Manage iCloud Storage

You can click BACKUPS > Tap the name of the old device whose backup is unnecessary for you > Tap Delete Backup to move it from your iCloud. By tapping the name of every single app, you can also delete the app data on iCloud.

Part 3. Selectively backup iPhone without iCloud

Instead of backing up everything on your iPhone, it is more suggested to backup the necessary files with the help of professional third-party software. Here FoneTool is recommended. It is one of the best iOS data management tools for Windows users.

Compared with iCloud, FoneTool has got:
✔ Fully & selectively backup. You can choose to fully backup iPhone like what you do using iCloud. You can also preview and select the wanted files that you want to backup on your iPhone.
✔ Unlimited backup space. Without paying for extra space to save the backup files. FoneTool let you backup iPhone data to computer locally, as well as to external hard drives, NAS, etc.
✔ Fast backup speed. The USB connection between iPhone and computer promises a fast and stable backup process. It just takes 3 seconds to backup 100 photos.
✔ Wide compatibility. FoneTool works well with iPhone from iPhone 4 to the latest iPhone 14 series, as well as models of iPad and iPod.

Get the tool on your computer, let’s backup iPhone to computer selectively in three simple steps.

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Step 1. Connect iPhone to computer with USB > Launch FoneTool and click Phone Backup > Locate Selective Backup and click Get Started.

Custom Backup

Step 2. Click each icon to preview and choose the files you’d like to backup > Click OK to confirm.

Select Files

Step 3. Click the horizontal line to choose a destination to save the backup files. Here you can be free to choose local folders, USB, and so on > Click Start Backup to begin the task.

Click On Backup

When the backup is finished, you can click View to go to the Backup History screen, where all your backups are listed. You can be free to browse, restore, or delete the backup files any time you want.

Restore To Device

FoneTool is also a nice helper to manage iCloud files. With FoneTool, you are able to upload files to iCloud for backup, download files from iCloud for offline browse, and delete unnecessary iCloud data to get more storage space. 

sign in icloud account

Conclusion

Hope you can have a clear idea why iCloud backup is too large now. Actually, iCloud backs up too much data that is unnecessary to be backed up. To better backup and manage your iPhone data, you can try the software - FoneTool mentioned in this guide. If this guide helps you, please share it with others.