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Quick Tip: How To Delete Individual iCloud Backups

Quick Tip: How To Delete Individual iCloud Backups

January 11, 2012
If you're utilizing Apple's iCloud backup service and are running low on those free five gigabytes of storage, you may wish to delete individual backups and free-up some space (either that, or you'll have to spend some cash on increasing your iCloud storage). Fortunately, deleting individual iCloud backups is easy to do. Read on, and we'll explain the entire process. First, you need to launch the Settings app, and then touch the "iCloud" tab. Here, there will be a list of iOS applications that are currently hooked-up to iCloud. You can toggle particular apps on and off, and also enable or disable Photo Stream, "Documents & Data" and Find My iPhone (we would recommend leaving the latter feature on, and configuring the service if you haven't already). However, the section we're interested in is right at the bottom of this screen: a tab called "Storage & Backup." Touch this, and information on how much storage you have used (and are allowed to use) will be displayed. Touch "Manage Storage," and you'll be taken to a screen that looks rather a lot like the one at the head of this article. The "Manage Storage" screen outlines how those five gigabytes of free iCloud storage (or more, if you've subscribed) are being spent. For example, 4.1 gigabytes of my five gigabyte allowance is being spent on iCloud backups for my iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPad 2; 12.3 megabytes is being used for "Documents & Data" and the Mail app is taking up a minute 16.9 kilobytes. As I'm using my iPhone 4S and iPad 2 (and have given my iPhone 4 to a grateful donee), I need to delete the iPhone 4 iCloud backups, as they're taking up a valuable 1.7 gigabytes. To delete an individual backup, simply touch the iOS device iCloud backup you wish to delete, and a screen similar to the one below will be displayed. Finally, as you may have guessed, all that's left to do is touch that big "Delete Backup" button, and the individual iCloud backup will have been deleted. It's as simple as that. If you have any questions regarding the above process or have a query you would like us to deal with in our Quick Tips series, feel free to leave a comment below. [via iMore]

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