iCloud Explained: Everything You're Not Using (But Should Be)

Frank Bravo 0:08
I think. Bravo and welcome to your technique over the podcast that gives you tips and tricks to help you simplify and get more out of the technology in your life. Today we're going to talk about Apple iCloud. ICloud is an Apple service that allows you to securely store photos, files, notes, passwords, and other data in the cloud. This includes backups of your OS devices, such as your iPhone or iPad, and other important data. But it's more than just storage. It's also the platform that keeps your Apple products up to date automatically across all your Apple devices. Before I get into all the features, I think it's important to understand the pricing because iCloud is not free. Well, it kind of sort of is, but it's not. When iCloud was first introduced, Apple automatically signed you up via your Apple ID for their free base package with five gigabytes of storage. That seemed like a lot. In 2011 when it was first introduced, but by today's standards, it's not very much at all. It should be enough to probably back up your iPhone and maybe a small iCloud Photo Library, but not much more than that. If you're wanting to use iCloud to its full potential, you're most likely going to need to upgrade the played plans, called iCloud plus, start at $0.99 per month in the US, which gives you access to 50GB of storage, which is way more useful than the free storage level for storing photos and files. If you have a large photo library that you want to store in iCloud, you're going to use a lot more storage, so you're going to have to upgrade. You can use this upgraded storage for your iCloud drive or storing sharing storage with other users. Right now, you can upgrade and get 200GB of storage for 2.99 per month. And then there are two terabyte program at 9.99 per month. Now that's a lot of storage. You can check how much storage you're currently using on your device by going to the settings app, then tapping on your name, then iCloud. There's a bar graph there that will show you your overall storage on your Mac. It's going to the Apple menu up in the upper left hand corner. System Preferences clicking on your Apple ID button, and then iCloud. Any of the paid iCloud plus accounts gives you the option to turn on iCloud Family Sharing, which allows you to share your stories in the features of iCloud between family members. I'll take a talk about this just a little bit in a minute what some of those features are, but to turn that on, you'll open up your settings or preferences. Again, click on your Apple ID profile just like you did last time. And then there should be an option for family sharing. Just follow the instructions on the screen and it'll help get it set up. Remember, if you're adding somebody who already has iCloud in a paid iCloud account, they're going to need to cancel their paid iCloud account. Otherwise, you're paying for both of them. So what are you going to be using all this storage for anyway? One thing you're probably using it for is backing up your iPod devices like your iPhone or iPad. If you take just two things away from this episode, I hope one of them is you should turn on iCloud backup for your devices. Doing so will allow you to easily restore your devices onto new hardware. If you currently if your current one becomes damage or loss to check and make sure you have turned on, grab your iPhone and iPad, go to the settings, then tap your name, then iCloud, and then you should find a setting for iCloud backup that should be set it on. So actually, if you haven't done it already and you don't have your iOS devices in your your Mac with you, now would be a good time to grab them. If you want to pause this episode, I'll be right here waiting for you when you come back with those devices. Might as well check out what your settings are while I go through them. Okay, so another thing that you might be using your iCloud storage for is storing your photos. Turning on iCloud photos allows you to upload your entire photo library into iCloud. This is a great way to get all your photos onto all your devices, without having to take up storage spaces on those machines. I have my entire 42,000 image library on all my devices, and I constantly am helping customers and other users turn this on. It is a great saving to turn this on from a computer. You'd want to open up your photos program. Click on the photos menu at the top left corner. Select preferences, then iCloud photos. In my case, I've turned on to download the originals to this Mac option because I have lots of local storage, and I want to make sure that I have a copy of all my photos on my machine. That might be overkill, but it makes me happy to be able to do that. On an iOS device, you're going to go to settings. Then tap on your name, iCloud again, and you should see a setting for photos. That's where you would turn it on. Doing this on all your devices will upload all your images into iCloud and sync the library so you have all your photos in one place. This may take a little bit of time, so don't be surprised if they are out of sync. I usually tell people, if you end up with like 5% within the range from computer to computer or device to device, you've done pretty well. Once you've done this, you can sit in front of the TV with your iPad and organize your photos versus sitting in front of your computer and doing it, sinking your desktop and documents folder on your computer to iCloud so you can access it either on an iOS device or another machine, is another thing you might be using your iCloud storage for. I use this feature so I can have the same desktop files on my office machine, my home computer, my laptop, and all my Io's devices. It gives me the ability to change a file in one place, and as long as I'm connected to the internet, open that changed file on another device. To turn this feature on, you'll go to the Apple menu again, System Preferences. Click on the Apple ID and then iCloud, then find the iCloud drive listed on the list. Push the options button and put a check in the box in their Desktop and Documents folder. Press done and you're all set. There's an option to optimize your Mac storage if you have a small amount of local storage. You may want to turn that on so that the files don't all fill up your hard drive. For all of those stored in the iCloud cloud settings. If you realize you don't have enough storage, it will. Apple will suggest to you to upgrade to the next level of iCloud plus. Isn't that nice of them? But while we're talking about the iCloud preferences window, you can see all the other options you can use iCloud for. This includes saving your password into keychain. I talked about this a little bit in part two of my password episode of your Tech Makeover podcast. If you're interested, you should go check that out. I'm sure it's there in the list. Remember earlier I said there was at least two things I wanted you to take away from this episode? The first being to turn on the backup of your devices. The second thing that I want to make sure you do is turn on the Find My option for all your devices. This is sort of like a homing beacon for your hardware, so that you know where it is, even when it's not with you. I had an experience where I was able to recover an iPad that was taken from an outside holiday party one year, because we had activated this on that device to turn it on. Go back to your settings, tap on your name, and then find my. You should see it there in the list. You should see an option for Find My iPhone or find My iPad and set that to on. The same setting is available on the Mac in the iCloud System Preferences window we just talked about. This is a great because if your device ever becomes lost or stolen, you can use your Apple ID to track it and even remote erase it. There's a bunch of other things you can do with iCloud as well, like syncing bookmarks between devices and Safari, organizing your iTunes purchases, and sharing files with others. So you can definitely go check that out. And in case you're confused, your Apple ID is the same as your iTunes ID or your iCloud ID it's probably the address that Apple gave you when you set up your account. I go, it goes by all sorts of different names, and I know it trips up a lot of people. That's probably one of the questions I get asked the most when I'm talking to people about this. But using the same Apple ID across all your devices allows for all these great features we've been talking about. So are you using iCloud to its fullest? Let me know how you're doing. And as always, if you have any ideas or topics that you'd like me to cover, please feel free to contact me via email at Frank at your Tech Makeover. Com. That's it for now. Thanks for listening to your tech makeover. If you haven't already, make sure you follow the Facebook page at facebook.com. Your tech makeover. That's where I'll break down this and other episodes. And before I go, I wanted to remind you to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss an episode. You can also check out your Tech makeover.com, where you can see more information about each episode. And if you want to find out more about me, please visit. Bravo! I see. Com. Until next time, I'm Frank Bravo, and this has been your tech makeover.