Cannot backup iphone 16 pro despite disabling backup for every app

It’s not that you can’t backup (as if there was a defect or issue that tech support could assist you with). It’s that you are relying on the free 5GB of iCloud which unfortunately isn’t enough long term for most users. You are using a smartphone and there are a lot of things that have data associated with your device so yes unfortunately it’s not odd to see you need more space for an iCloud backup. If paying for more isn’t something you want to do and you have data you can’t or don’t want to eliminate from being part of the backup then you will need to look at other options for backing up such as doing a manual backup to a computer or looking for free Cloud storage options from a 3rd party service. It’s hard to point out what may be contributing to your backup size but a big one can be Messages (especially if you never delete them like me….and have accumulated many with photos/videos/etc received or sent) for example. That’s just an example. It’s not really or necessarily “bloatware” like you assume….but you can verify what is included in your backup (and toggle off what you don’t want) by looking at the backup details in settings

phlucious wrote:

I'm running iOS 26.2 on an iPhone 16 Pro. I keep my device clean and used to backup my device's OS using the minimum iCloud storage (5GB).

Starting about a year or two ago, I stopped being able to backup my iPhone to icloud. I didn't backup much... just my contacts and a couple of apps that didn't have their own backup. I even backup my photos using OneDrive. I think I'm the perfect candidate for their free tier of iCloud.

I pulled up Settings > iCloud > Storage > Backups > [My device name] today to see what's up. It now says that the Next Backup Size is 7.38GB, which is obviously larger than the 5GB amount allotted for the free tier. The minimum remains 7+GB even after I have disabled backup for literally every app on the screen.

This means that Apple now has so much bloatware in the device backups that a minimalist user cannot even backup their device out of the box, despite the fact that the user has NOTHING being backed up. This feels like some seriously predatory practices from Apple because I get regular reminders from Apple that my device can't be backed up, but it's THEIR fault that the minimum THEY set is too small for THEIR phone, and there's nothing I can do to stop the reminders.

On the one hand, 5GB is hardly anything and they haven't changed the minimum for like a decade despite storage getting cheaper every year... it really should be higher. But on the other hand, why does my device need 7+GB? Is there something I can remove? Some hidden setting? Some setting that's stuck despite being disabled?

Sorry contacts are synced to icloud which also counts toward your icloud storage.

If you have this enable Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support then you're to the cloud and also counts toward icloud storage.

the easiest fix it to upgrade to more icloud storage so you can back up and sync more data to the cloud.

Why back up this data? The value of the data is seemingly less than the iCloud+ 50 GB tier or the equivalent storage available on a (possibly borrowed) Mac or Windows PC, so discontinuing the backups seems reasonable.