Hi Friends!
Could someone kindly explain in details what these are and how they are different from each other? I am so confused, as they seem to do the same things.
Thank you so much!
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iCloud storage is the space for your data on Apple's servers. It is available in four flavours: 5GB (free) and three paid subscriptions; 50GB, 200GB and 2TB. These paid subscriptions are called iCloud+
iCloud+ is Apple’s premium cloud subscription. It gives you more storage for your photos, files, and backups, and additional features available only to subscribers
iCloud Backup is a process for certain iOS devices to upload backups to iCloud rather than the other option which is to backup to a computer.
Cloud Backup makes a copy of the information on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. When your device is backed up in iCloud, you can easily set up a new device or restore information on one you already have.
iCloud Drive is a syncing service between a device and iCloud, and uses the iCloud Drive folder on a Mac or the Files app on iOS to access the content.
With iCloud Drive, you can keep files and folders up to date across all of your devices
Further detail is found in the linked pages.
iCloud storage is the space for your data on Apple's servers. It is available in four flavours: 5GB (free) and three paid subscriptions; 50GB, 200GB and 2TB. These paid subscriptions are called iCloud+
iCloud+ is Apple’s premium cloud subscription. It gives you more storage for your photos, files, and backups, and additional features available only to subscribers
iCloud Backup is a process for certain iOS devices to upload backups to iCloud rather than the other option which is to backup to a computer.
Cloud Backup makes a copy of the information on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. When your device is backed up in iCloud, you can easily set up a new device or restore information on one you already have.
iCloud Drive is a syncing service between a device and iCloud, and uses the iCloud Drive folder on a Mac or the Files app on iOS to access the content.
With iCloud Drive, you can keep files and folders up to date across all of your devices
Further detail is found in the linked pages.
Just about right.
iCloud is the serivce; iCloud storage is the name given to your storage space. iCloud+ is the name for the three paid subscriptions for storage space beyond the free 5GB plan.
Yes, the Apps themselves come from the App store and function on a device.
Files can be anything in your iCloud Drive folder. Photos and videos are managed by the Photos app; you can also upload individual photos via iCloud Drive as a 'file'.
Yes. Mail is one example of data in iCloud available (synchronised) to all your devices.
Yes. An important one.
See Files above.
What does iCloud back up? explains what is backed up from your iPhone to iCloud.
Your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch backup only include information and settings stored on your device. They do not include information already stored in iCloud such as Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, Notes, Reminders, Voice Memos4, Messages in iCloud, iCloud Photos and shared photos.
You could instead backup this data to a computer.
iCloud Drive is none of the above - it is your documents and files in the iCloud Drive folder.
Okay so let me check if I finally understand all the terms:
Kindly let me know if I get it right, or where I am wrong. Please help, I am learning this. I want to understand my device and the services it brings.
Thank you so much!
1 - Messages and Photos are included in the backups for iPhone unless you have the alternative active in which case they are synced already with iCloud:
Messages in iCloud - on an iPhone simply turn in on in Settings > [your name] > iCloud or on a Mac in Messages > Preferences > iMessage tab > Enable Messages in iCloud.
iCloud Photos loads your photos directly from your iPhone camera or syncs new content from iCloud uploaded by your other devices should you have other devices. If you don't have iCloud Photos active your photos gather in your camera roll until you sync them with your computer (and its photo collection). You can have one of these systems active.
2 - The content listed in this point is either contained on your phone (ie. not synced to iCloud) or it is synced to iCloud. In the former case they are included in backups. In the latter case they are not.
3 - Photo Stream is a service which makes available your most recent photos (maximum of 1000). You can select from these which you want to copy across to your Photos app. I found it didn't work as well as I'd like and long ago moved to iCloud Photos which works a treat.
4 - Turning off Mail's access to iCloud on your device severs its connection with Apple's mail servers. You can continue to use the app with other mail service providers. Turn it on again to access your iCloud mail. Your device needs to send or receive (synchronise) the mail from Apple's servers.
5 - Notes can store notes locally on a Mac but not, as far as I'm aware, locally on an iPhone. I won't test it by turning them off on my iPhone. As I recall if you turn off iCloud access for the other apps you list you will get a message asking if you want to keep what you have locally or delete it from your device and at that point they become independent of iCloud.
Hi David,
Thank you for your explanation!
So iCloud is the space where I can store my files via Apple’s servers. So why is a Backup needed if I have already turned on all “apps using iCloud”? The same question goes with Drive.
Hi David,
Thank you so much for the detailed explanation and confirmation. You do not know how meaningful your reply is to me!
I have another question though, and it is related to Files. You said that it can be anything, so I would like to take this opportunity to ask this: does Apple (iPhone) even allow users to transfer any files other than photos and videos from a computer to iPhone using iTunes the way Android phones do (acting as an USB)? As far as I know, only photos and videos can be transferred from a PC to an iPhone, and can be stored on iCloud. iTunes requires specific apps for specific types of file to be transferred, so for example, if I want to transfer a Zip file to iPhone, I have to search on App Store an app dealing with Zip files in order to do that. If there is no such app, I can’t transfer the file, am I right?
Oh, it's an awfully long time since I used iTunes (now Finder on recent macOS versions) to sync files to an iPhone or an iPod. You have to remember that these devices started as music players and the capability quickly expanded to contain other sorts of files. At one stage you could also use an iPod as an external drive to hold files just like a USB drive.
I dragged out an old iPhone to test the syncing of files (rather than use my current one) and yes, the device seems to need an app to read the file, which is what you'd expect really. Once the app is on the phone you can click on the Files tab in iTunes/Finder and then drop your file into that panel, then sync it over. I downloaded Pages and Adobe Reader from the App Store then successfully synced a pages document and a pdf to the iPhone.
However, the necessity to do this has long gone in the days of fast broadband and the model now is to work with files on iCloud, though you can still do it the old-school way. This is explained in Sync files from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad.
Some further reading might be of interest, and I infer from your question that you have a Windows computer (?).
See
View, add or remove iCloud Drive files in iCloud for Windows
Work with folders and files in iCloud Drive
Access iCloud Drive files from your iPhone and other devices
Hi David,
Thank you so much for your reply!
Yes, I am using a Windows PC, and I would like to transfer any file, not just the common stuff like .jpg, .pdf, .mp4, etc. With iOS, the standard way is to use iTunes, so you will have to have iTunes installed on the Window PC as well as some 3rd party apps installed on the iPhone (like Documents for example, which my iPhone 6 Plus cannot download because the app requires iOS 14 upward).
For Android, however, you just plug your phone in the PC and you’re good to go. You can transfer any file. ANY. FILE. you want with some simple click (copy/cut + paste). An Android phone act exactly as an USB.
I have tried searching online for this, but most of the time they just talk about photos, videos and documents. And if I don’t want to use iTunes for that task, I will have to do some very sophisticated stuff with mu Windows (creating a new account, setting up folder permission & sharing, etc.) in order to send/sync file from Windows to iOS, which is a nuisance for a supposedly simple task.
I am thinking about buying the new iPhone 14. So far I have learned how to add images and ringtones by using iTunes to personalize my device, but that is just about it. Apple make it so hard for file transferring, and I to be honest I may just use an Android to make life easier.
Sort of. As I said, the necessity to sync from iTunes to the device is gone and the model is to sync from iCloud Drive on a Mac - or iCloud for Windows and then have your iPhone access it from the cloud. The file will open on the phone. A pdf in Files/iCloud will open without the need to have Acrobat on the phone, or a Word document will open without the need to have Word for iOS for example. It's just that iTunes needs to see a reader on the phone to sync the associated file - as in my understanding which, admittedly, is a bit rusty.
Apple now uses the cloud model which as you observed is much simpler than going via iTunes. I've never had anything fail to open. Apple has by-passed the need to have a computer for using an iOS device. When I bought my first OS X Mac twenty years ago the model was to have the computer as the digital hub. You never hear that now because it's all about cloud computing and many people manage quite happily with a smart phone without owing a computer, as long as they have iCloud or the Google equivalent for Android (I presume).
Ah, I see it now. So Apple is all about cloud storage rather than local storage. Though admittedly it does have some benefits, it requires internet connection all the time to access iCloud. It does not entirely make life easier, I think. Since I am not locked into iOS eco, I am not familiar with the cloud stuff. A Windows PC has always been my daily driver, and Windows is pretty similar to Android. They are quite open, which makes some simple tasks... simple.
Anyway, thank you so much. The conversation with you has helped me to better understand iCloud.
Hi David,
A few more questions have emerged as I dig further through this:
My head is kind of exploded right now. Please help!
Hi David,
After checking your reply and doing a ton of intense readings, below are my new questions:
Apple articles keep saying that them apps "already stored in iCloud" and "not included in iCloud Backup". My biggest problem is, storing in iCloud (Apps using iCloud) is just to share across multiple devices, not to store anywhere. If it cannot be found in the iCloud Backup, then after I reset my iPhone, where can I restore my data???
Android devices seem to make it extremely simple. 2 options. Either Share or Store. There's no middle ground bs.
Here is a very good way to explain the difference:
"It’s in the names. iCloud sync makes sure your data is synchronized across devices, example send an iMessage on an iPhone and it’ll sync to an iPad. Delete that iMessage on an iPad and it’ll synchronized to the iPhone and delete the iMessage. iCloud backup will backup the data to Apple’s servers but does not necessarily synchronized the data across devices. Think of iCloud backup as you placing data on an USB drive, you’ve backed up data and now if you want to synchronized it to another device you have to plug the USB drive into the new device and manually download the data.
TLDR: iCloud sync only synchronized data between devices, but doesn’t backup to Apple’s servers. iCloud Backup stores the data on Apple’s servers, but doesn’t necessarily synchronized data between devices automatically."
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/amganx/difference_between_apps_using_icloud_and_apps/
Sadly, it's just not that simple.
Hey there,
What are you wondering about?
please give us more details!
What are the differences between iCloud Storage, iCloud Backup & iCloud Drive?
