I cloud storage full

Thank you for your help caravansera. I am something of a tech phobe but will give it all a try and report back,

Silverlining. It shouldn't close down at far as making calls or sending texts but it's going to struggle finding storage space.

The storage is Gigabytes Gb (nine zeros) not Megabytes Mb (six zeros). Difference between billions and millions. In other words, you have 200 Megabytes left.

Go into Settings, General, iPhone Storage to see how the 15.8Gb is being used. On the multi-coloured bar graph, you’ll see the two grey areas iOS and System Data. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see how much memory they each take up. There is nothing you can do about iOS which takes about 7Gb. System Data should be around 5Gb. If you are using a lot more than that, it could be that your browser is storing a lot of temporary data that can be deleted. Go back to Settings, Safari and select Clear History and Website data. See how much difference that makes. You might lose a few passwords for different websites but they can always be reset.

With only 16Gb memory and needing say 12Gb for iOS and System Data, that's going to leave 4Gb (four billion bytes) for everything else but that’s still pretty good depending on what else you are using and storing.

Do you know how to capture a screen shot from your phone? Press the on off button top right and the round Home button at the same time. You'll hear a click and the capture will be saved in Photos.

Go into Settings, General, iPhone Storage. See if you can capture the multi-coloured bar at the top and post it here. Make sure there is nothing in the photo which identifies you.

If you don’t want to do that, then can you just scroll through the storage and say what’s taking up the most storage e.g. how much is being used for Photos (or are they stored in iCloud?), how much for Messages, how much in total for apps - a guestimate from the bar graph will do. Is anything else taking up a lot of storage?

Some apps only use relatively few Mb. For example, BBC News is 104Mb, my county library app 21Mb, my energy supplier app 18Mb, my banking app 68Mb and so on but of course, that does all add up.

If you are storing a lot of photos on the phone not in iCloud that will add up too. Chose a photo and tap it. Swipe upwards in the middle of the photo. You should see how much memory it is taking up. It’ll give the focal length and aperture, the camera resolution 12Mp (megapixels), the size of the image x * y and a number of Kb (kilobyte) or Mb. A colour-rich photo could take up 4 or 5Mb.

Hopefully, this is some help to find out how that 15.8 Gb is being used and may help you to free up some more of that.

I found out that when I was taking photos I’d clicked on something that videos them, thus using up much more storage. I discovered this because I showed a photo of the Flying Scotsman to a friend and if I kept my finger on the picture the train moved! Which was a good mistake cause it looked great! I’ll check out the Age concern courses because my U3A one isn’t working for me.

Apparently, Age UK run courses! I’ll make further enquiries.

I have used 15 .8 mg out of 16 mg.
Despite deleting more apps and more mail this morning, it hasn’t given more space and remains at 15.8 .
Does this mean I only have .2 left before everything closes down?

I pay 99p for a huge amount of extra storage. I also back up to an external hard drive perhaps you could do that too?

I think I’ll make enquiries, it will help me get through the winter months, when I won’t be gardening!

Oh me too Patsy. A course would be great.

silverlining48. I think my iPhone is a 5 SE, with a small screen. I didn’t want a larger one at the time, as I like to put it in my back pocket, although that isn’t always a good idea when going to the loo! 😳 I’m thinking of getting an upgrade, but not sure whether to order on line. In fact, I’d happily attend a course to learn how to use the phone so as to get maximum use from it.

midgey

Caravansera I was going to say that the cloud contributes massively to global warming too. Does anyone need to keep every email ever?

No, but it's necessary to keep some in case the need arises to check something from several years ago, particularly as we are frequently encouraged to go paperless. I certainly keep copies of insurance documents and bills.

Personal storage isn't real the issue. Take Doodledog's example above. She has under 30Gb of music that she would like to put in cloud storage. At the moment, it takes up a tiny memory chip inside a small phone. Fair enough, a world population of 8 billion people doing the same thing would take up more space but even then, it would look insignificant besides the vast amount of government, NGO and corporate memory space needed so that governements, organisations and businesses can operate and so that individuals can have access 24/7 to everything that they now demand digitally.

For everybody who has shopped online today, booked a holiday, renewed their car insurance, checked their WhatsApp messages, watched TV and a myriad of other digital applications, including accessing this site via a web browser, they have contributed to the problem because the data as to be stored somewhere ready for retrieval when we demand it.

We aren't go to return to analog communcation unless terrorism knocks out our power systems or there's an apocalypse. The only answer is green energy and, as we know, a decarbonised power sector and net zero are political hot potatoes.

Caravansera I was going to say that the cloud contributes massively to global warming too. Does anyone need to keep every email ever?

Caravansera

I don't subscribe to Apple Music so am working a tad in the dark here! (I synch ripped CDs or iTune purchases across my Mac and iPhone via Finder.)

If you go to your Apple Music app, do you not see a red circle icon with a person inside where you can sign in using your daughter's password?

Presumably you have done the Account > Upgrade to Family step described here:

support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/music/mus33f6a78c9/mac

Thanks again. I will have a go later when I have both my phone and other devices handy.

Are you sure these e-mails or texts are from Apple?

I get them too, but as I do not use cloud storage it cannot be full, and when I checked the sender's e-mail address it was obviously a scam.

So don't send any money!

If you need more storage, download to a computer and store whatever it is you need on an external hard-drive.

A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes.

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/

There is no doubt that centralised data storage is hugely energy hungry not least the cost of cooling such vast machines. It’s the price we pay for a digital world demanding 24/7 access to data and services.

The UK government introduced a cloud first policy 10 years ago. Most government services, NGOs and major businesses use cloud storage.

Go to see a doctor - your NHS records are pulled from cloud storage, search Google, shop online, watch TV, pay an energy bill, buy a train ticket, insure the car, borrow a library book, access news and news archives, these and much much more - all using cloud storage.

Efforts have been made to site centres in cooler climates to take advantage of “free cooling” but then you have network signal latency. The further the data has to travel the longer it takes to get to its destination and people get irritable if data demands aren’t met almost instantaneously.

It’s a world we have been sucked into and have come to expect. These systems are very vulnerable to cyber attack in geo-political conflicts or just for the hell of it but what’s the alternative now?

I cloud storage now accounts for more carbon emissions than the airline industry
A single data unit uses the same amount of electricity that can power up to 50,000 homes
So recycling, using public transport, not flying is meaningless when billions of people are adding to the carbon problem using this service

I don't subscribe to Apple Music so am working a tad in the dark here! (I synch ripped CDs or iTune purchases across my Mac and iPhone via Finder.)

If you go to your Apple Music app, do you not see a red circle icon with a person inside where you can sign in using your daughter's password?

Presumably you have done the Account > Upgrade to Family step described here:

support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/music/mus33f6a78c9/mac

Sorry - she is not the cat's mother, but my daughter . I edited my post and cut that bit out.

There is no synch library option on my phone (iPhone 12).

I wonder if it is because I am using it via Family sharing? I think she has the Music subscription and mine is the TV one - either way, we each have one or the other and share them - might that explain it?

Thanks so much for your patience . I know how frustrating dealing with numpties can be.

Hmm. My guess is that you haven't turned on synch library on your iPhone. See here where it explains how to synch music from your Mac - your first screen shot - see steps 6, 7 and 8 and then synch on iPhone:

support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204926

There's a link at the bottom saying what to do if songs are missing. When you follow that link, the first thing it says is:

Make sure all of your devices have Sync Library turned on and signed in with the same Apple ID that you use with Apple Music.

Does that solve it?

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Caravansera I'm sorry to be dim, but from what I can tell I am synching my tunes to the cloud, yet when I look at what is on there they are not showing up.

I'd happily delete them, as they are eating my phone storage, but as they are synched across devices I am scared that I will lose them if I delete. As I said, a lot have not been bought from Apple, but are backups of CDs. I'd like to just delete from my phone, as I have a lot of storage on my Mac.

I'm happy to store photos on there too, but I don't seem to have the option you describe upthread (see photo of iPhone storage).

I think these photos show the relevant information, but I can post more if not. If you can help I would be very grateful - it's so frustrating as I am usually quite capable with things like this.

I pay 99p too. It’s surprising how quickly the number of photos mounts up, so it’s a worth it.

I pay £0.99, used to be £0.79, for gigantic icloud storage. It's worth it to know that nothing is lost.

It's mostly pictures of dogs and sunrises and coffee but still.....

Thanks for that, I have done some of what you suggest already but will give the other advice a try too. Yes it’s 16 Gb and have used 15.5gb plus, so not s lot of space available,

It sounds like you need to do some housekeeping.

Go to Settings, General, iPhone Storage. You should see an option to enable iCloud Photos which allows 5Gb of free data storage.

Email should not take up a lot of space. Go to your mail settings and see what you have synched. I have mine set to one month and it's only using 200Mb. You can set it to less - from one day to one month. You may have yours set to no limit which is storing more than you need to access on your phone assuming that you have another device that you also access emails on.

Now go back to iPhone storage and check what apps you have and what, if any, can be discarded.

I'm using 29Gb of 32Gb internal storage but it isn't affecting the performance of my phone,

Is yours a 16Gb? It should be more than enough if you store your photos in iCloud and don't use a lot of apps.

Think mine would be a 2016 too caravan, I got it about 6 years ago. The battery is fine but I keep getting messages about it having no more space even though it’s only photos and emails on it.
I would quite like a slightly. larger one
and assumed a bit later model might be better given they have
more storage,