# Semi-OT: Your iCloud Storage is Full send us money money money



## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 28, 2019)

I'm now getting constant iCloud Storage is Full, send us $12/year for 50GB of storage.

Yes, that would be the easiest solution. But I don't have any use for that amount of storage - it's too much for silly stuff and too little for even my photos. 

Messages are taking up all the room (I have most other things turned off). But I don't want to delete all my SMS and Apple messages, especially not the attachments that come with them - photos, etc.

Any ideas?

TIA


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## robh (Nov 28, 2019)

If you got the message in the form of an email, like I have been on occasion, it's most likely spam.

Rob


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 28, 2019)

No, it's real - email and a notification, and iCloud is full.

4.99 GB is messages, the rest is little stuff (calendars, contacts, whatever).

The problem is that if I delete messages, they and all the attachments will be deleted on all my devices - two Macs, iPad, iPhone.


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## David Kudell (Nov 28, 2019)

I pay $10/month for 2TB of storage. All my docs go up in iCloud Drive. If my computer dies, I don't lose a thing, including my 65,000 photos. A family member of mine just lost all their photos and music library to hard drive failure.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 28, 2019)

Understood, but that backup strategy wouldn’t work for me. I just want to save my messages so I can free up iCloud space.


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## tav.one (Nov 29, 2019)

I got 200 GB family plan, it has not just saved me but all my family members from buying a higher capacity phones and all our phones always have space available for capturing videos and apps. iCould drive is also convenient as its available on all my devices.
Its such a small investment for so much peace of mind.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 29, 2019)

Thanks, but this is making me crabby. 

Every time someone posts a question on this forum, the only responses are to buy something!

I’m fully aware of cloud backup plans and that they’re the right solution for some people. My question isn’t about that, it’s about how to save my messages with the attached pictures.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 29, 2019)

Again, if I wanted to spend $1 a month I could. But the idea of being forced to do that irritates me. It’s not the money, it’s that I wanna save my messages and I wanna save them NOW!


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## Symfoniq (Nov 29, 2019)

This is the way it goes with Apple, now. If you want to do something, there’s a service you are supposed to buy. It makes me crabby, too. It’s no coincidence, for example, that Time Machine has languished while iCloud has become the officially sanctioned method for backups.


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## robh (Nov 29, 2019)

Try this:
open up one of the conversations, click inside the window, select all (Command A), Copy, then paste into the TextEdit app. (Then save the file obviously.)

See if that'll be adequate for your needs. (And you'll only have to pay me less than $1 a month for services rendered. )

Rob


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 29, 2019)

Thanks Rob.

I'll see if I can remove enough data that way to make iCloud happy, but the conversations with pictures in them tend to be ones with, for example, my daughter - and we text each other all the time (i.e. they back-and-forth is a few years long).

But it's a good idea.


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## robh (Nov 29, 2019)

Glad I could help.
From my quick test, the photos were included and in the same order as the original conversation, so hopefully this works out to your liking.


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## Damarus (Nov 29, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Again, if I wanted to spend $1 a month I could. But the idea of being forced to do that irritates me. It’s not the money, it’s that I wanna save my messages and I wanna save them NOW!



Its worth the money... It automatically backs up your stuff. That way if something ever happens to your phone, your replacement can restore all of your data as if noting happened.

The alternative is to not backup to iCloud.


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## scoringdreams (Nov 30, 2019)

Photos-wise, you could consider Google photos for free cloud storage.


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## ptram (Nov 30, 2019)

Cloud storage is phenomenal, if you want to avoid depending on hard drives failures.

Then, comes the day when Apple changes from iCloud to saveURfiles, and all your older data are wiped out.

Paolo


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 30, 2019)

Thanks Rob. 

Man. People here can’t help themselves. What is the psychology? Justifying one’s own purchases, but why do people have that compulsion?


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## jason.d (Nov 30, 2019)

This is a real problem for iPhone owners. Apple makes it super easy to pay and keep everything backed up. But if you don’t want to pay you’re on your own. Sure you can make offline backups, but then cleaning out your phone and/or free iCloud space to the last backup you made is a pain. I don’t know of any alternatives that isn’t a lot of work, so I just pay


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 30, 2019)

Apple provides a kludgy but workable way to back up everything other than messages using iTunes.

But if you want messages to show up on multiple devices - a great feature that I use all day long (so I can type rather than tap) - you need to have Messages (capital M) synchronized via iCloud. It's unfortunate that they need to be backed up on the iCloud server, however.


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## kgdrum (Nov 30, 2019)

I also received one of these iCloud $torage emails.i tried looking for older backups and backups of older iPhones I don’t use anymore and could not find anything I could delete to free space(I have minimal photo & message content)
Is there an easy way find & get rid of old data?
Thanks


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## SvenE (Dec 1, 2019)

I switched to google services (Gmail, Photos etc) years ago . 15 GB of free mail and google drive cloud storage . Free unlimited storage for all of my pictures/videos (15 years plus of pictures), super easy to find old picture by keywords. I am not willing to pay extra for ICloud storage.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 3, 2019)

Apple's biggest strength is that they nail most user interfaces, but iOS backup and sync is Mongolian Clusterfongula.

Kurzweil's Objectmover from the '80s is the model for this. Very simple: two columns, one for the instrument in this case and one for the Mac. You drag files to move/copy them between the two.

Now, I suspect Apple has a reason for not letting you get at messages, and the cynic in me suspects it has to do with money. Just the fact that they incorporate it in their music and video store reinforces that it's a shakedown of some kind.


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## macmac (Dec 14, 2019)

iMazing | iPhone, iPad & iPod Manager for Mac & PC


iMazing lets you transfer music, files, messages, apps and more from any iPhone, iPad, or iPod to a computer, Mac or PC. Manage and backup your iOS device simply without iTunes. (was DiskAid)




imazing.com





This lets you save your messages (plus other stuff) to your computer.


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## macmac (Dec 14, 2019)

Here’s another page about that app, regarding messages specifically. One of the features is being able to save them forever while deleting them from your phone. No iCloud.

The other thing that’s nice about it is that it can be a continuation of the messaging GUI format that you had on the iPhone, as well as saving out to text files. 









Transfer, Print & Backup iPhone Messages - SMS - iMessages | iMazing


Manage your iPhone text messages and attachments from your computer. Save, archive and print your conversations to keep them alive. Or simply transfer to a new phone.




imazing.com


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## Michael Antrum (Dec 15, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Apple's biggest strength is that they nail most user interfaces, but iOS backup and sync is Mongolian Clusterfongula.
> 
> Kurzweil's Objectmover from the '80s is the model for this. Very simple: two columns, one for the instrument in this case and one for the Mac. You drag files to move/copy them between the two.
> 
> Now, I suspect Apple has a reason for not letting you get at messages, and the cynic in me suspects it has to do with money. Just the fact that they incorporate it in their music and video store reinforces that it's a shakedown of some kind.



Not looked into this, but wouldn't a time machine backup do this for you ?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 15, 2019)

Michael Antrum said:


> Not looked into this, but wouldn't a time machine backup do this for you ?



Backup is a totally different issue from sync, but thanks.

I have two alternating Time Machine backups + disk images of my drive.

The issue is only text messages and attachments. They're synced between devices automatically, and if you delete any messages from one then it deletes them from the others. You can't access the messages the way you can access, say, photos - they're hidden somewhere.

So they're backed up in a Time Machine backup, but what you've backed up is the synced file, not all the files you want.


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## Michael Antrum (Dec 15, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Backup is a totally different issue, but thanks.
> 
> I have two alternating Time Machine backups + disk images of my drive.
> 
> The issue is only text messages and attachments. They're synced between devices automatically, and if you delete them from one then it deletes them from the others. You can't access the messages the way you can access, say, photos - they're hidden somewhere.



OK, I just thought that perhaps time machine would backup your messages with the rest of your files and allow you to scroll back through them like it does with regular documents....

edit: To be fair to apple, I get charged 79pence a month for 50gb, which is pretty much nothing...


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 15, 2019)

Michael Antrum said:


> OK, I just thought that perhaps time machine would backup your messages with the rest of your files and allow you to scroll back through them like it does with regular documents....



Nope. There are utility programs you can buy that sort of do that, but they're more expensive than the Apple gotcha.


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## macmac (Dec 15, 2019)

That’s why I suggested iMazing. It does what you want with the same interface as your phone, so basically you can keep the messages as they were in iMazing and delete the phone stuff.

It’s also on sale in this deal today for $14.99:









iMazing iOS Device Manager: Universal License for Mac and PC | MacHeist


The Must-Have App to Easily Manage Everything on Your iOS Devices




www.macheist.com


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