iPhone and iPad making huge iCloud backups for unknown reason?

[576316]

Hi guys, hoping you can help me out with this one. My girlfriend has been having problems with the 5GB iCloud allowance being used up and not allowing her iPhone or iPad to back up. However, every time I got into 'Manage Storage', she has iCloud turned off for every app. The only thing turned on is Camera Roll and that's claiming only to be 500mb big yet it states the iPhone back up is going to be 2.3GB big. So then the iPhone claims there's not enough space left to back up. Where is it finding this data?

My iPhone back up is 700mb and my iPad about the same. Am I missing something really obvious? What's creating the huge backups? Is this a problem with her iCloud account itself? (Her iPad backup claims to also be around 2.6GB for similar, unknown reasons).

Screenshot showing that every app is turned off except Camera Roll.

 

[impaler]

Couple thoughts...

Take a look at this article, which lists what is backed up:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12519?viewlocale=en_US

Note that included in iCloud backups are also SMS/MMS messages and iMessages. The rest are only references to app layouts and iTunes purchases (not the content itself), app config data itself, etc. Since many people text, I'm willing to bet a lot of that data is from Messages. If images, files, etc., that are sent via iMessage/SMS/MMS are not deleted as you go, they can add up. The only way to really remove after the fact is to go back and manually find and delete. iOS 8 will add an option to auto delete messages as you go.

Finally, recommend deleting the current backup, and doing a fresh backup. That may clean out some stuff hanging on. Before you remove the backup, if you can, recommend a full iTunes encrypted backup, which backs up far more than iCloud backups, to include all your passwords.

 

[576316]

Couple thoughts...

Take a look at this article, which lists what is backed up:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12519?viewlocale=en_US

Note that included in iCloud backups are also SMS/MMS messages and iMessages. The rest are only references to app layouts and iTunes purchases (not the content itself), app config data itself, etc. Since many people text, I'm willing to bet a lot of that data is from Messages. If images, files, etc., that are sent via iMessage/SMS/MMS are not deleted as you go, they can add up. The only way to really remove after the fact is to go back and manually find and delete. iOS 8 will add an option to auto delete messages as you go.

Finally, recommend deleting the current backup, and doing a fresh backup. That may clean out some stuff hanging on. Before you remove the backup, if you can, recommend a full iTunes encrypted backup, which backs up far more than iCloud backups, to include all your passwords.

Thanks for your reply. The screenshot included was taken as I had just deleted both of her backups and iCloud was claiming the first, new iPhone backup would be 2.3GB big. She only recently deleted all of her iMessage and text conversations so I can't see that this would be causing all of that space. I'll have another look though. Maybe a restore would help??

 

[fessura]

I'm having the same issue with my iPhone 6. Never has a backup taken so much space without listing what is there. One difference with this phone is the storage is large enough, so I've put a good amount of music, videos, podcasts and my entire photo library on it. Maybe there's some bug where it's backing up part of that. It might be worth trying to remove all of that, if you have any, delete the iCloud backup, start over, and see if the size changes. I might give that a try.

 

[kaiseryeahhh]

I think the problem is in the copy of iBooks. Now it is a system application, and I see no leaves remove the copy. iOS 7 if I could, but here and for me it is a big bug. I do not need to back up 15gb of pdf. iOS 8.1 beta 1 follows the same thing happening. there any way to activate it?

 

[richpjr]

My wife's backup was over 4 GB! She has no books and very few messages on it. I had to delete it - no idea what was in it where it got that big.

 

[Trebuin]

That screenshot is incomplete, showing it is still refreshing the rest of the programs. Let it finish spinning and see if it changes anything.