If you’re like most people, your iPhone is the center of your digital life. You likely use it to manage all sorts of personal data: everything from contacts and calendars to photos and other media. And then there’s even more important stuff, such as financial records, passwords, and a long list of credit card numbers—stuff that you definitely don’t want falling into the wrong hands.
Apple’s cloud service, iCloud, is a great way to store your favorite media for access anytime.
All of your iTunes purchases are stored in the cloud or accessible right from your iPhone or iPad or iPod touch – without the need for a sync cable connection. Not only that but any photos were taken can be automatically uploaded as well as music, calendars, and contacts. In order to take advantage of all these features, you will need an Apple ID account as well as a linked email id.
Benefits of iCloud
If you are an Apple user, you get a lot of benefits out of using iCloud. It instantly shares and makes accessible your photos and videos across multiple devices. In fact, it saves to your email address, and iCloud save in.
How Does iCloud Drive Work?
iCloud drive is a cloud storage system that lets users save files to the Cloud and access them from all Apple devices like iPads or iPhones. This is done by saving it into your iCloud drive on the device you want and then making it accessible through other devices that share the same Apple ID as yours. You can choose which files to sync between different apps, delete anything no longer in use and add new files whenever needed.
Accessing these files is also easy as long as they are being shared from one of your active Apple Devices.
Access Your Files when Using iCloud Drive
When working on an iPad, you can view your files using iWork apps available in the App Store. You can equally use them in iCloud drive when using Macs and other Apple devices connected to your iCloud account. The availability of all versions makes it possible for users to access their files from PCs, Macs, and tablets seamlessly at any time.
In order to access iCloud from your iOS devices, you need to set up an account from Settings > iCloud or through iTunes on your PC or Mac. For uploading media, you will have to install the free iCloud application from the App Store and get started by signing in with your Apple ID.
In addition, if you want to use all of the features like automatic photo uploads etc., then make sure that they are activated for each option in your iOS settings (in the case of photos, go to Camera>Photo Stream).
You can store up to 5GB of data for free but this offer is valid only when you buy an Apple device (iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch) and sign into it with an Apple ID. The iCloud storage plans start at $20/year for 10GB and can go up to $100/year for 55GB.
There are three options in the ‘Storage & Backup’ menu in Settings that show how much data you have used out of which, two are relevant when it comes to uploading media:
Photo Stream: Your entire photo library is automatically uploaded to iCloud’s servers so that your photos remain available on all devices; but depending on how many snapshots you take, this could make up a considerable amount of space. You can access photos taken in the past 30 days from all your iOS devices via Photos app > Albums > Photo Stream (in case you use multiple like me then it will be a different album for each device).
The iCloud storage plan you choose determines how long your photos are stored on Apple’s servers. The free 5GB plan stores them for 30 days, while the 20GB ($20/year) and 50GB ($40/year) plans to store them for a year.
Of course, this is just a convenience factor as they can be downloaded from any device anytime through the Photos app > Albums > My Photo Stream. Just click on ‘Download All’ to copy all photos onto one of your iOS devices over Wi-Fi or sync to iTunes via USB cable)
Use: While it is very easy to upload media content to iCloud, if you have a large library then the storage will fill up quickly. So what you can do is selectively upload items that you use the most.
Saving and Uploading Photos with iCloud
Photo Stream will automatically send the last 30 days of pictures from your iPhoto to iCloud, which makes them available for download on all other devices. You can manage your settings so photos automatically upload. This is relatively simple to do, and this will keep your photo library having a constant backup.
You can also check and see which photos are stored on iCloud. To backup your files, go to settings. Then, click [your name] >iCloud > Manage Storage. Here, you can see how much iCloud storage you have. To have your phone automatically back up your photos every day, go to settings >iCloud > iCloud Backup and choose iCloud backup.
This is the best way to make sure your photos are being saved!