Freeing Up Space for iCloud Backups 

13 Oct 2013

Over the past few weeks, since upgrading to iOS 7, I’ve been getting error messages that the nightly iCloud backup hasn’t been able to finish because I don’t have enough free iCloud space. The odd bit about that is that I don’t remember seeing an error like that at all in the previous few weeks (or months, really). I’d occasionally seen the error due to connectivity issues, but never due to issues with storage space.

I let it linger for a few days, but knowing that my device wasn’t getting backed up bugged me enough to take a look.

Getting to the iCloud Backup settings isn’t entirely obvious.

Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage

That’ll drop you off on a screen that lists each of your devices that you are backing up. For me, it’s an iPad 2nd gen and iPhone 5S.

Drill into the device your on, and you’ll be greeted with a list of what is getting backed up on that device. You’ll see a list of apps, how much space the backup of that app takes, and an on/off switch to control whether or not you backup the data for that app.

Everything looked normal at first glance, until I noticed that Instapaper [1]

1.2GB of backup used for Instapaper. Double that, when you realize it’s installed on both my iPad and iPhone.

Half of my iCloud space taken up by one app.

Why is that a big deal? Well, Instapaper syncs all of its data with the Instapaper web site. So even if every article on my devices was deleted, I could just re-download them from the web. So there is literally zero need to back the articles up to iCloud[2]. CLick that button to off, and all of a sudden, all my backups are finishing with room to spare.

I’m guessing that some change in iOS 7 or a recent update to the Instapaper app changed what data it was backing up, leading to it filling up my iCloud storage. It’d be a nice thing for Instapaper or Apple (wherever the fault lies) to fix that in a future release. Regardless, if you find your device complaining about not being able to backup to iCloud, look for apps where the data can easily be recovered from the web (or another source). Wouldn’t you rather restore some web data to a single app than have to piece together all of the settings and apps on your phone because you weren’t backing it up?