iCloud using too much storage for backup?

diamv wrote:

Hello! This might be a silly question but I don’t understand how iCloud works anymore. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max. I haven’t been able to backup my data in months because I ran out of iCloud storage (default 5 GB). Today I finally decided to upgrade to 200 GB, specifically because I wanted to backup my photos and videos (which take up about 180 GB). Now, my phone just notified me that I am already out of iCloud storage again, and when I look at my settings, it says iCloud took up 195 GB only for backups, and only 1,1 GB for my photos. When I look at the details, it’s just a lot of apps that together make up much less than 20 GB of data. So my question is: why is that taking up so much storage and how can I fix it? Apologies that the screenshots are in Romanian. I also unticked all those apps before taking the screenshots (and storage for backup didn’t change).

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/54fb9266-efcf-43b5-986e-818f65263d22

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/7e2f79bd-291b-4045-9595-6f6c25ef7d29

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/62bdecbf-195f-4c91-ba62-0e2f8de8f3e1

top 3 apps off your screenshot taking up icloud space is icloud drive, photos and whatsapp.