Why Your iCloud Storage Becomes Full.
You need to properly transfer photos from iPhone to PC if you are getting a message on your iPhone, telling you that you are getting low on your iCloud storage and that you need to purchase more storage space.
With every iPhone, you get 5gb of free iCloud storage and you have taken loads of photos, videos, installed some apps, have quite a few documents etc all in your iPhones iCloud account and as this is only an insane 5GB in size, it will become full quite quickly.
Your first option here is to pay Apple £0.79GBP per month to increase your iCloud’s storage capacity limit by 45GB making it a total of 50GB. I know that this is a very small amount to pay each month, but you may not want to do it.
A second option is to install on your Windows PC, iCloud for Windows, free software that will enable you to transfer all-new images taken on your iPhone to your Windows PC automatically. You can then move your images to a folder of your choice on your PC for safekeeping.
Transfer photos from iPhone to PC.
First of all, you need to have an iCloud account set up if you do not have one already, most iPhone users set this up when they first purchase their iPhones. You also need to have your iPhone connected to the same WiFi network as your PC.
Once that you have downloaded and installed iCloud for Windows on to your PC you need to check some settings to make sure that the software is working properly, so just go ahead and start the software and sign in with your Apple ID and you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the image below.
Then you will need to select the options for photo’s as shown above and another screen like the one below will open.
Make sure that the option ‘Download new photos and videos to my PC’ is checked, press ‘done’ and then ‘apply’. Then you will need to know where your download folder is and you can do this by clicking on ‘This PC’ from the folder tree in ‘File Explorer’ and then open either the ‘picture’ folder or the ‘iCloud Photos’ icon as shown in the screenshot below.
You will then need to look for and open a folder called iCloud Photos…
…and within this folder is a folder named ‘Downloads’. It is in this folder that you will see the photos that you have taken on your iPhone. Please note, Your iPhone needs to be connected to the same WiFi network as your PC and only photos taken after you have installed the software will be shown here.
So go ahead and take a test photo on your iPhone and watch as it appears in your downloads folder after a few seconds. Make sure that you close the camera app and the photo app on your iPhone after you have taken your test photo.
From now on, whenever you take pictures on your iPhone, you just come back to your PC, switch it on, and your photos will download to your ‘downloads’ folder automatically.
Once your photos are in this folder you can then move them to a folder of your choice for filing away on your hard drive where they will stay forever, but remember to always back up your data in case of disaster.
How You Make a Saving.
To keep using your free iCloud account, first of all, make sure that your photos are saved where you want them to be, in a folder on your PC and then you can safely delete them from your iPhone.
Deleting photos from your iPhone also removes them from your iCloud account which in turn saves the storage space that you are using in your iCloud account, so if you regularly delete your photos from your iPhone, your storage should never grow anywhere near to 5GB. But do not delete photos that you want to keep until they are in your downloads folder.
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