How to download messages from iCloud

Thanks Alex. This is the outcome that I was afraid of.

The way this shakes out is that once a user reaches 5GB of anything on their iOS device(s) that are uploading to iCloud, there is only the choice of deleting and losing content or making the lifetime commitment of paying for cloud storage with Apple. Google & Co. solved that problem for us with Google Photos, and document content is discrete to the document, so those types of files can be backed up elsewhere, then erased from the iOS device(s) and ultimately from iCloud. Messages however, along with the associated attachments is kind of like an Outlook .pst file, in that it can't be "subdivided" if you will. While I have found free third party software that will actually offload the iMessage and texting content from my iPhone, it won't grab the images and attachments. So, if I were to delete content from the iOS devices, I'd lose the attachments.

iCloud is, to me, the best way to back up iOS devices because it is so painless, but committed users who have multiple iOS devices with discrete content on each quickly run out of storage space on iCloud. While it is cheap to buy more space, 12 bucks a year, being unable to download to a mass storage device connected to a PC makes this a lifetime commitment.

Am I missing anything?

Hi Joseph, and thanks for your help and for confirming the content/size question. Now let me make sure I understand what you are telling me: If I turn off Messages in iCloud on all of my iOS devices with which I engage in Messaging/texting, there will be a separate iCloud backup that I can download from iCloud and preserve on my Windows PC. Is this correct?

Then, if I wanted to read those messages/texts, I could just restore them to any iOS device. Right?

And, if on that iOS device, Messages in iCloud was still off, it wouldn't back up to iCloud and fill up my 5GB of storage, right?

Hopefully you see where I'm going with this...I want to use iCloud only to back up my iPhone, I don't care about content on my three iPads, just my iPhone. And currently, I'm about to run out of storage space due to my 4GB of messages, texts, and other attachments people feel it necessary to send me. Hope I can do this.

No argument here singh49asda. I only tolerate it because the things that Google tracks, i.e. location, searches, metadata in my photos, is stuff that is discover-able by observation anyway, or in the case of websites I visit, by my ISP. I long ago resigned myself to little or no privacy electronically.