My 11 year old is taking up all our icloud storage even though she doesn't need any of her videos backed up.

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My 11 year old is taking up all our icloud storage even though she doesn't need any of her videos backed up.

I enabled family sharing so that my wife and I can share the icloud space to back up our data. However, I set up my 11 year old daughter's iPad with a family account so that I can control her usage. But she is part of the family sharing and takes up most of the storage to the point where it is always full. She says she doesn't need any of it backed up, but family sharing doesn't allow me to remove anyone under 13 from family sharing. Is there a solution to free up the icloud storage space. She takes up over 75% of the space.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Aug 25, 2023 8:57 AM

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Answer 1

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FoxFifth

Level 10

469,467 points

Aug 25, 2023 9:08 AM in response to John Togasaki

If she has iCloud Photos turned on, that can be turned off on her phone. See instructions in How to turn off iCloud Photos - Apple Support

However, photos will then be included in iCloud Backup if iCloud Photos is turned off so she would need to turn that off as well, which means that nothing on her phone would be included in iCloud Backup. That could be dealt with by backing up to a computer instead. Not an ideal situation.

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Answer 2

Aug 25, 2023 9:20 AM in response to John Togasaki

Technically speaking, your daughter's data is not backed up to iCloud, it's synced to iCloud. That's an important distinction because it means if your daughter deletes things from her iPad, they will be deleted from iCloud.

If your daughter doesn't want the videos at all, she should delete them from her iPad. They will be deleted from iCloud in 30 days. Or, she can go to the Recently Deleted folder in Photos and delete them immediately. I would advise against that.

If your daughter does want to keep some of the videos, how about transferring them to the Mac? In this case, I'd recommend using Image Capture (built in software) because it won't put things into the Photos library and they will be easy to move to an external drive.

Image Capture User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Once the videos have been transferred to the Mac, your daughter can then go ahead and delete them. Before finally deleting anything, make sure that the vidoes are completely transferred. Try playing a couple!

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Answer 3

Aug 27, 2023 5:54 PM in response to IdrisSeabright

Thanks for the distinction between backing up and syncing.

Let me clarify, my daughter wants to be able to access the photos and videos from her iPad, she just doesn't need them to be backed up. She constantly creates or saves videos to her iPad, so backing them up to a Mac isn't a great solution since they will be changing all the time, and she says she doesn't need them to be backed up.

However, I can't just delete them from her iPad, because the reason she saves them in the first place is so she can look at them. She also makes videos to possibly upload to YouTube. I would to that for her, so I would back those up at the time I upload them. I need a way for her to be able to access her photos and videos in her Photos Library without it being synced to the iCloud Family sharing.

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Answer 4

Aug 27, 2023 6:00 PM in response to FoxFifth

This may be what I need to do. If the phone is a child account, is it still possible to do this. When I tried to remove her from Family sharing, it said I couldn't remove people under 13. Does this not apply to turning off iCloud Photos and iCloud Backup on the phone? If it doesn't, I'll give it a try.

I can back up her phone ever so often. As long as she is okay with the possibility of losing her photos and videos, it should be okay to not catch everything with the backups.

Thanks!

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Answer 5

FoxFifth

Level 10

469,467 points

Aug 27, 2023 6:32 PM in response to John Togasaki

As far as I know you can turn off iCloud Photos and iCloud Backup for someone under 13, you just can't completely remove her from Family Sharing.

Also, I forgot to mention in my previous post that she can leave iCloud Backup turned on but exclude the photos from the backup. That can be done on her phone by going to Settings > [username] > iCloud > iCloud Backup > [device name] and tap the green switch next to Photos (but Photos won't appear in that Backup list if iCloud Photos is on).

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Answer 6

ruben265

Level 1

8 points

May 20, 2024 3:10 PM in response to John Togasaki

I will begin using text

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My 11 year old is taking up all our icloud storage even though she doesn't need any of her videos backed up.

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