Apple offers 5GB free storage space for all iOS devices users with valid Apple ID but you will find it will fill up quickly if you don’t remove/transfer data such as photos unless you pay extra for larger storage space. You can click this link for iCloud storage pricing. Whether you are paying for extra space or not, photos should be transferred to computer or to any storage devices that you own that can be accessed locally.

In most cases, iCloud storage will fill up because of photos of the camera roll. I don’t want to pay extra fee for larger space just because of the photos since I back up my photos on my computer regularly so I select what to back up by selecting the data I want to back up. You might ask why back up if you are not backing up photo? Well, what about game achievement you spent many hours? those notes and memos you took it down? What about the messages? What if you don’t want some files to be backed up? There are hundreds reasons why you want to select what to back up. If you don’t want it, you can skip this.

Step 1. Select setting.

Step 2. Select iCloud

Step 3. Select Storage

Step 4. Select Manage Storage

Step 5. If you have only one device to back up, it will only show one device, but if you enabled multiple devices under one Apple ID, you will multiple devices. Select the device.

Step 6. As you can see my back up size is only 2.3GB well below 5GB limit.

Under BackUp Options you can see my Photo Libray is 6.1GB! If I enabled this to back up, I will get low storage notification and it will not back up as there are no space for it.

You can now scroll through and select which data of the app to back up.