Sorry, how do I back up Settings (and optionally local Notes or local Calendar) to iCloud without backing up photos? I thought a backup was all-or-none.
And yes, the name “Which?” for an organization is silly, however noble its etymology.
Well, you can select which apps contribute to your iCloud backup. So theoretically you could minimise the backup to only include the stuff you absolutely require for restoration from scratch.
But IMO this is splitting hairs; ultimately your cloud accounts are already backed up by the cloud provider, and the stuff in your backups is always essential for restoration. That’s how Apple designed it to work. So sacrificing apps to the whims of fate is a choice to do without if you’re wrong in your estimation of the importance of that data. So yeah, all-or-nothing, really.
I thought this was true too, but I’m having trouble finding the requisite controls in iOS 18. Has anyone verified this in the current version?
Settings / Apple Account / iCloud / iCloud Backup - scroll down and find the current device (“this iPhone”), tap it, and from there (after waiting for the spinner) you can select which apps don’t back up. The items I had turned off before remain turned off.
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Also from the Manage Account Storage view, if you choose your current device from the list of backups (but only the current device—you can’t remotely manage another device’s backups, only delete/disable them).
For fun and curiosity, I tried disabling all possible apps—a tedious business, because each and every disabled app puts up an “Are you sure?” prompt, and the webview itself is a janky affair—and it came to 599 MB. I confess that this seems a bit on the large side just for settings, but I expect there’s something I’m not accounting for, and anyway it is a trivial amount of storage, probably even for the free plan. Naturally it is unviable for device restoration.
I just went to the recently updated Apple Support page for how to back up an iPhone or iPad using iCloud. There is nothing in the text to indicate that you can selectively back up only part of your iPhone. At the bottom of the page is the advice that if you get a message that you don’t have enough space, buy more iCloud storage.
If you watch the video on that page, it does show you how to get to the selection page and choose which apps to back up, but that’s hardly being transparent.
Also, it has been said many times that Apple needs more tiers so people don’t overpay when they only need 250GB (multiple devices perhaps) and have to buy 2TB, for example.
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