I can find no way to exclude messages in the iCloud backup. I've turned of backups for the application and also turned off the toggle off for the message application in the "applications using the cloud" section. Still they are backed up and eating up my consumed iCloud space for the backup.
This forces me to delete my messages on the phone to keep the backup under 5GB.
Does anyone have a solution I have not already tried?
iPhone X
Your solution as you already know is to delete your message.
Imessage/SMS/MMS is part of the icloud and itunes backup, there is no excluding it.
Don't be cheap an just buy the 50GB of extra storage for .99 cent.
You can purchase software like PhoneView or iExplorer for MacOS or Windows and offload messages to your laptop or desktop computer for archiving. Then delete them from your iOS device.
Unless you send a huge amount of messages with attached pictures, videos or other large files, texts take up a tiny amount of space since simple text compresses massively in iCloud storage.
Seems a bit convenient for Apple to leave no way of explicitly excluding the messages from the backup. Some people may want to keep their messages locally on the phone storage they own, but not care about messages enough to back them up. This leaves customers no choice but to turn off the iCloud backup altogether, or start a subscription like you mentioned.
I see no other reason to have this limitation other then coaxing customers, who may not want to be bothered finding out exactly what is eating their cloud space, into upgrading their space and paying more money to apple.
$1 a month is just the beginning. Even if that's all one buys, multiply that by the millions of iPhone customers with more then 5GB of messages, and your talking millions being earned because of this.
Is there any option available to automatically clean up photos and videos from the message app sometime after they've been viewed? Nope. There is only an auto delete retention time for entire message threads.
michael_maxwell wrote:
$1 a month is just the beginning. Even if that's all one buys, multiply that by the millions of iPhone customers with more then 5GB of messages, and your talking millions being earned because of this.
For a system that Apple has spent billions of dollars to construct and provide. Their data center in North Carolina alone cost over $1B USD. There are currently 11 Apple owned cloud data centers (6 in the USA).
Just saying that for the cost of building out these huge cloud based systems, $12 a year for a 50GB slice of it is not expensive.
Either way, they are going to iCloud storage, so still a problem for me.
If you turn on syncing Messages using iCloud, they aren't part of your backup. From the article below.
1. When you use Messages in iCloud or turn on iCloud Photos, your content is automatically stored in iCloud. That means they're not included in your iCloud Backup.
Back up – What does iCloud back up
iCloud Backup and Messages application
