iCloud storage full but 5GB free?

it isnt a ios bug if you go to setting>icloud>manage back up and storage> click on a back up you can turn something off to make your next back up less then 5 gb

Actually it is an iOS bug because if you had actually read my post you would see I had gone to here and there and unticked all the apps, and after turning off ALL the apps the backup still said it would be 5.1GB until I wiped the phone, did not restore from backup, and just installed as new, and suddenly it's down to 50MB - but is indeed already growing again. The numbers on each of those apps in kilobytes or megabytes do not add up to the amount it says it is backing up.

Please read all the relevant posts before telling people that its not a bug, or giving a fancy solution which in the cold light of day is incredibly weak (have you tried turning it off and on again). These things have been tried. They have failed. The solution (as opposed to wiping your phone) has yet to be presented for ever growing backups of unexplained or listed data.

I have found this worked for me;

Delete all backups in icloud from the phone

Delete icloud from the phone (turn it off) - making sure you dont erase all data from your phone

Reinstall/turn on icloud

Start new backup

I think this wipes clean everything on your icloud and lets you start again with 5gb storage - I'd guess it's a bug.

My tech knowledge is limited so don't hold me to it but those steps fixed mine!

Do you still have this problem, as I seem to have just caught it.

I am using an iPhone 5. I have backed up to iCloud regularly many times before with this phone. My previous iCloud backup about a month ago was under 800MB. I recently tried to back up the same apps and content on the same device again and got the "This iPhone cannot be backed up because there is not enough iCloud storage available". I went to Settings > iCloud>Storage & Backup>Manage Storage and unchecked every single App. This still left a calculated backup size of 5.8GB. Given that all sources of content to be backed up are unchecked, I have no idea what this 5.8GB refers to. It effectively prevents me from backing up any data at all.

As suggested by earlier threads and other forums I deleted my existing backup from iCloud and closed iCloud before reopening. This had no effect and now I have no backup (I will back up to my PC as soon as I can).

Someone help me clear this mystery backup data that is stopping me from backing up my iPhone. If something goes wrong with my iPhone, or it is stolen, then I am effectively stuffed!

Try this,

sign out your Apple ID then resign in.

hope my answer is helpful for you.

Thanks for the suggestion. What do you mean sign out then sign in, where?

Setting>>iCloud>>your Apple ID.

just like reboot your iPhone.

I am still having this problem.. I deleted all Icloud backups and my next backup is still 5.7gb..

Hi daghstdrummer,

I spent hours on the phone to Apple (and then Apple's über experts took a few more days to get back to me) on this one. It's a crazy iPhone backup glitch. And it's all about your Messages (as in SMS). All those messages are backed up, including any media that you have ever sent or has ever been sent to you. This cannot be turned off in setting, nor is it listed in the itemised list of programs!! Everybody will have this problem sooner or later!

The official (and seemingly only) fix is to troll through your messages and delete any that have media (photos/videos) attached to them. To test this theory you can just delete a few (recent) bigger messages and see what that does to your 5.7GB backup.

Good luck!!

Thanks this worked for me! I was ready to pull my hair out!

I too have this problem!

Apple wanedt to charge me £28 for storage and at the moment funds are tight.

I turned off all App backups etc inc camera roll, backed up my photos to Time Capsule and it says I need an .7GB to enabe me to do a backup!

Is is true that 'messages' takes a lot of space up?

How can we find out what actually is taking the space?

Cheers guys.

I have 20gb of space and only using 5GB but I get the same warning. Why would this happen?

Read my earlier post.

Photos and videos stored in "Messages" (i.e. SMS) take up massive amounts of space and are not shown in the "iCloud backup" data information.

Go through your messages and delete any with photos and or video.

This worked!!! I iMessaged 5 videos last night and my phone tried to backup later and couldn't due to insufficient storage. I tried deleting those videos and other conversations from my messages, then rebooted my phone, and it worked. Thanks for the help!!!

My iCloud gets easily clogged with Camera Roll photos so I switched off Camera Roll under Settings > iCloud Backup & Storage > This iphone > Camera Roll.

This worked to get rid of the error message but is only a workaround and not a real solution. The solution would be to do this in combination with backing up your iPhone on your computer via iTunes or via the free method described here: How to backup iPhone despite not enough iCloud storage available.