What I wish I'd known before turning on iCloud on my iPhone.

Stilidid wrote: … I never used iCloud. In the past Apple Pay worked fine, but when I tried to use it recently, it told me iCloud was required. Here's what I wish I'd known. …

I agree that there seems to be more hype than clear explanations about iCloud. Synchronizing through the internet is still not fully seamless. One thing that I wish people knew was that they need to keep their storage to less than 90%. Curious about your Game Center freezing the Settings app, I signed off of Game Center and had no problems. That made me wonder about your storage. How much storage do you have--do you have more than 10% free?

Many operations use the iPhone's empty storage space to move files around. If we run out of storage, then those operations may not be able to be completed and, ironically, that can mean that even deleting doesn't work. If we have less than 10% available, then things can get lost forever. This is also true if our iCloud storage space gets low.

I'm not sure what the defaults are now for iCloud. When I first turned it on, I don't think everything started up automatically. I know that I started using iCloud Photos well before starting to fiddle with iCloud Drive.

Stilidid wrote:

…

In my opinion, it would be better for privacy and data security to allow users first to enable Advanced Data Protection, then to choose what to sync, and finally to start syncing.

You can offer Apple feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

This link may help:

Use iCloud on iPhone - Apple Support

Note: before deleting content from iCloud, you should turn off syncing for that class of item. Also, you really should use iCloud backup.

In either the iCloud settings or todo app settings there should be options to turn off syncing with that 3rd party todo app.

As has been mentioned, here, if you have suggestions for Apple, go here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

Stilidid wrote:

• I never used iCloud. In the past Apple Pay worked fine, but when I tried to use it recently, it told me iCloud was required. Here's what I wish I'd known.

As soon as iCloud was turned on, it immediately synced Notes, Contacts, Reminders, Safari data, Stocks data, Health data, Voice Memos, and data from the 2Do third-party todo app. I did not want any of this synced.

I could delete most of the unwanted data from iCloud, but • all attempts to delete the Voice Memos and 2Do data have failed.

• Turning off Reminders syncing deleted all Reminders from my iPhone.

Turning off Game Center syncing • freezes the Settings app.

• Advanced Data Protection (end-to-end encryption) requires a recovery contact or recovery key.

• Disabling access to iCloud.com requires two-factor authentication.

In my opinion, it would be better for privacy and data security to allow users first to enable Advanced Data Protection, then to choose what to sync, and finally to start syncing.

You can choose what to sync to the cloud... contacts/notes/message/photos etc...

Did anyone bother to tell you what iCloud does do for you? Had I known all of what this stuff could do, I'd have been signed up and using it years ago.

Do you have a Mac or just your iPhone? Consider buying a Mac if you don't. It works in ways you never thought to ask for. There is no excuse for Windoze. None. Life it too short.

With those things turned on and synced, you can pick up any of your Apple devices and walk out the door with everything you need, right in your hand.

Example: you enter an appointment in your Calendar on your phone. It's automatically also on your Mac and any other devices you have (iPad(s), Apple Watch, Mac). Same for your contacts list. They're all synchronized. I no longer have to pick up my phone to find someone's email or phone number. It's done. Seamless.

Take pictures on your phone. It's backed up on iCloud and as soon as it has Wifi, it will sync down to your Mac and other devices.

Safari will sync not only your bookmarks but, you can stand up from your Mac, pick up your phone and Safari knows what you were looking at and even where you were on the page.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote work that way too.

If you need extra storage and sign up for iCloud plus, even at the $0.99 or $2.99 level gets you the ability to get to all of that data from a PC, using the browser of your choice. I can log into iCloud on Firefox, on Windoze 7. I can see, share, download any of my pictures. I can access my Pages, Numbers and Keynote files. I can even make changes and updates to them. Apple has browser versions of the programs that offer many of the basic functions.

I have created a spreadsheet in Numbers, built formulas and everything, and saved it, all from the PC. No Apple devices involved. I did the same in Keynote. Built a presentation that would stomp anything out of Powerpoint. It never even touched a piece of Apple hardware.

iCloud is a lot cheaper than paying for a MS365 subscription. Even if you don't have a Mac, you can do more with iCloud per dollar than you'll get out of Microsoft. Even from a PC.

My instincts and experience tells me there’s something buggy going on with iCloud and iOS these days. It seems like more than coincidence that an increasing number of users have been reporting sluggish or stuttering performance and just generally odd behaviour from their iPhones over the past few years — and iCloud is a major part of the problem too.

Could some of this be related to the increasing demands of Apple Intelligence, or is it simply a growing collection of bugs and compatibility issues within iOS, particularly on devices that are effectively locked to older versions such as iOS 18?

We’ll probably never know, especially when Apple Support’s answer is sometimes to create an entirely new Apple profile and Account and perform a complete factory wipe and restore after they repeatedly say to different customers: we don't have this kind of behavior documented.

That leaves people with hundreds of apps, years of accumulated settings and customizations, and carefully arranged layouts facing days of manually rebuilding their devices but never completely — without establishing what actually caused the problem in the first place. They hope, often with bitter disappointment this resolves their issues.

At least with Android, the Cloud isn't a centred around the OS like with iOS. You can easily backup your apps to any PC through the file manager or another app. And there are apps which preserve your home screen layout unlike with iOS.

At least with Android, the Cloud isn't a centred around the OS like with iOS. You can easily backup your apps to any PC through the file manager or another app. And there are apps which preserve your home screen layout unlike with iOS.

At least with Android, what? Yeah, at least with Android it doesn't do any of these things that make the Apple Ecosystem work. You're advocating for storing uncooked meat outdoors and just let the flies eat the bad stuff. That makes it better than having Apple refrigeration to store your food.

Good luck with that Android and Windoze stuff. I know multiple people who had various levels of their computer lives implode with Win 11 in the past 12 months. One had a brand new Dell, fresh load of Win 11, all updates done and it absolutely would NOT install MS Office '24. Refused. It kept trying to download MS365 instead. After literally DAYS of us fighting with it, he decided to go to Geek Squad. They had it less than a day. Gave it back. No charge. "We can't get it to load either."

Lots of Apple users are soft. Go set up, load and turn on all the features on Windoze / Android to try to match the Apple ecosystem, and learn to appreciate how glass smooth Apple is by comparison. Yeah, an occasional glitch. They're computers. They're managing a ton of information.

Richard.Taylor wrote:

How much storage do you have

iCloud: 745.7 KB of 5 GB used. iPhone: 76.54 of 256 GB used. But this is useful information for others.

Donkey_Hotey wrote:

Did anyone bother to tell you what iCloud does do for you?

Yes, Joe Kissell, in his excellent book Take Control of iCloud.