Let's have a look at how you go about setting up iCloud Drive on both your Mac running OS X El Capitan and iOS devices running iOS 9. It now operates as a standalone service on both OS X and iOS, catching it up to Dropbox and other cloud services that allow for quick and convenient uploads so you can access your files across your Apple devices while freeing up some local storage on your devices in the process. And if you don’t pay Apple $0.99 a month for their 50 GB iCloud plan, you’ll be pinged with notifications every few hours telling you to buy more space.Apple iCloud Drive has arrived. You can quickly fill up your iCloud account if you keep these on. If it’s a document you made in a native Apple app, it’s probably synced here.īy default, iCloud Drive also stores your Desktop and Documents folders, which may be very large. TextEdit documents, your books, your system preferences, Automator scripts, the whole kitchen sink. ICloud Drive is used for everything else. Again, you’ll have to make sure the option is enabled on all your devices for it to work correctly. Open the blue “iMessage” tab at the top, and make sure “Enable Messages in iCloud” is checked.Īs long as this option is on, your messages should sync regardless of when they were sent. For that, you’ll need to enable “Messages in iCloud.” After you’ve signed in, click “Messages” in the top menu bar, and open the preferences. However, this won’t sync any old messages you may have to your Mac. Just make sure you sign in with the same account you use on your iPhone or iPad, and make sure iMessage is enabled on all your devices. IMessage won’t be enabled by default, but all that is required is signing in when you launch the app for the first time. Just don’t break both of them at the same time. If you have two devices you regularly use, like a MacBook and an iPhone, having only “My Photo Stream” enabled can save you a lot of space, while still having your photos backed up on your MacBook.
There is still a use for “My Photo Stream” though, as storing every photo you take in iCloud will very quickly fill up all of the 5 GB of free storage that comes with iCloud.
Additionally, nothing is backed up except the last month of photos, so if you lose your device without “iCloud Photos” enabled, you won’t be able to get your pictures back. That means, if you take a picture on your iPhone, and don’t use your iPad for a while, your photos won’t sync to the iPad. “My Photo Stream” is different, and only stores the most recent photos for a month to give your other devices time to sync. If your device breaks, you can enable “iCloud Photos” on a new device and redownload all of your pictures in iCloud. The first, “iCloud Photos,” simply stores every photo you take in iCloud, and syncs across devices. The main thing to note with photos is that there are two methods of backing them up. Make sure the options are also enabled in the iCloud settings on your iOS devices, and any other device you have signed into the same iCloud account, or you could run into problems. You shouldn’t have to worry about any of these so long as you are signed in and the option is checked in the iCloud settings on your Mac. Mail you’ve sent and received, as well as drafts.Safari Data, including passwords, open pages, and browsing history.Most iCloud features sync the following data across all your connected devices out of the box: The main feature of iCloud is keeping your critical personal data synced across your devices (and backed up in the cloud). Either one will create a new iCloud account, which you can use on any device you want. You can sign up with your own email address, such as a Gmail account, or you can make a new email address.