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iPhone Backup Too Big, No Apps

I believe the phone should be able to be backed up to iCloud without paying for it and recently I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that lowers my trust in Apple. The iPhone backup keeps ballooning. I went in and disabled 100% of the apps from being backed up and my backup size is still over 7.8Gb. Any idea why?

iPhone 12 Pro, iOS 15

Posted on Sep 25, 2021 2:14 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 25, 2021 2:25 PM

Thanks, this didn't answer the question. I'm not interested in a sales pitch but am looking for where I can go to reduce the backup size outside of the once place that's obvious on the phone.

10 replies

Sep 25, 2021 2:44 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thank you and I actually agree which is why I as dumbfounded that the backup size was increasing even as I decreased what I wanted backed up. I only removed all apps from being backed up as a test just to prove that the backup would be near-zero or just very small. I did assume the apps syncing to iCloud would've taken the same 5 Gb space but did not know the backup was smart enough to avoid pushing the data twice, so thank you for that. So I deleted the backup from iCloud, turned off all the Apps, and next backup size still says 7.82 Gb.

Sep 25, 2021 2:19 PM in response to Overmind_Hive

You are provided 5GB of free space in iCloud. If you need more than 5GB of space in iCloud, you buy more space.


You can get 50GB of space in iCloud for a mere.99/month. You likely spend more on two drinks at Starbucks for that much money.


Whether you think more space should be free or not is not a subject to be discussed here on this user to user only forum. Here is a link you can use to upgrade to iCloud+ storage --> Manage your iCloud storage - Apple Support

Sep 25, 2021 2:35 PM in response to Overmind_Hive

If you don’t back up anything it will take no space. The purpose of a backup is to restore the phone after disaster. If you don’t include any app data in the backup it will be lost if you ever have to restore a backup to the same phone or a replacement phone. What’s the point of backing up nothing?


Tap on Settings/[your name]/iCloud/Manage Storage/Backup/then the backup itself. This will list everything included in the backup. If there are things you don’t care about preserving in the event of disaster turn off the switches for those items. But note that this will not reduce the size of the backup immediately, because the backup is incremental and keeps earlier backed up data for a while. If you want to clear it out completely turn off backup, then delete the backup.


Note that anything you sync to iCloud will not be included in the backup; you can see what you sync to iCloud by going to Settings/[your name]/iCloud and seeing what switches you have turned on. Synced data and backup data share the same 5 GB.

iPhone Backup Too Big, No Apps

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