I use 120 MB of iCloud storage space for iCloud Backup of my iPad & iPhone. There is still 4.8 GB free from 5 GB, but I have a notification in iPad's backup window that I'm lacking space to back up to iCloud and would rather not buy more space to back up today.
IOS – iCloud has space but iCloud Backup says that I don’t have enough to complete a backup
backupicloudiosstorage
Related Question
- IOS – How to calculate the amount of space that iCloud Photo Library would take up
- ICloud storage full: “Not Enough Storage”. Backups exceed 5GB
- ICloud – Why is Skype using over 1 GB of iCloud backup data
- IOS – Unable to complete first backup to iCloud due to lack of space
- IPhone – iTunes says I can’t back up iPhone because I don’t have enough space…but I do
- MacOS – Numbers error: not enough space in iCloud
Best Answer
This could easily be explained as the 120 MB of used data is likely for the data all the apps store in iCloud. Contacts, calendars, specific third party apps can have storage in iCloud. You can determine this by looking at the Manage Storage pane in settings app (see below).
The warning you describe comes up when the expected size of the next backup is greater than the available free space.
You can reduce the size of the expected backup on iOS (updated for iOS 12) as follows:
If that is less than the available space, you may need to contact Apple support to have your account fixed on the server side. In most cases, you can toggle off the largest few items and then attempt a backup when the estimate is less than the available space.
Once the backup is complete, you can tune the backups or manage your space as needed on iCloud.