iCloud is a cloud storage and cloud computing service developed by Apple Inc. It launched in 2011, and is designed to securely store and sync users’ data across their Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad and Mac.
iCloud automatically syncs across all of a user’s Apple devices, ensuring that changes made on one device are reflected on all the others. This includes contacts, calendars, reminders, notes, Safari bookmarks, and more.
Most iCloud data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, ensuring that users’ data remains secure and private. Apple has implemented various security measures, including two-factor authentication, to protect users’ accounts and data.
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The signature feature is storage. Users can place various types of files online — including photos, videos, documents, music, app data, and more — to be accessed from all their devices. Each user gets a certain amount of free storage (5GB by default), with options to upgrade to larger storage plans for a small monthly fee.
In addition, iCloud provides automatic backup functionality for iOS and iPadOS devices. When enabled, iCloud Backup backs up users’ device settings, app data, messages, photos, and more to the cloud, allowing for easy restoration in case of device loss, damage or upgrade.
iCloud Photos automatically uploads and stores users’ pictures and videos, making them accessible across all devices. The photos sync automatically overnight when your device is charging and connected to Wi-Fi, so you never have to worry about it.
It also includes features like Shared Albums for sharing photos and videos with friends, and Shared Photo Libraries for automatically syncing all your photos within your family.
One of the most important features is that you can fully back up your iPhone and iPad to the cloud. That way, if your device is stolen, lost or destroyed, your replacement can pick up exactly where you left off. Like Photos, backing up happens silently in the background overnight.
Turn it on in Settings, tap on your name at the top, tap iCloud and tap iCloud Backup. Make sure Back Up This iPhone is enabled.
iCloud is an important part of the Find My service, which helps users locate lost or stolen devices, such as iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or AirPods. It also allows users to remotely lock, erase, or play a sound on their device to help locate it.
This can be accessed from the Find My app on all Apple devices as well as the iCloud web app.
iCloud Mail is a free email address you can claim when you create an Apple Account. (You don’t have to — you can stick with Gmail or another provider if you want.) If you choose to create an iCloud Mail address, it’ll end with @icloud.com. It has a few advanced features built right into the Mail app on all your Apple devices.
Hide My Email lets you sign up for online services and apps without revealing your real email address. Instead of letting your email get in the hands of a suspicious site that’ll send you spam or leak online, Hide My Email signs you up using an address like [email protected]. This keeps the spam from hitting your inbox.
If you have your own domain name or website, you can set up a Custom Email Domain. This uses the same mail inbox, but with a professional-looking email address, like [email protected].
Whether you use the Notes app to meticulously log family recipes, keep meticulous class notes in school or as a digital junk drawer for random stream of consciousness thoughts, all of them will sync to the cloud across all your devices. You can even access Notes through the web app from any browser on a device not signed into your Apple Account.
Similar to Google Drive or Dropbox, iCloud Drive is an online file storage service. Apps like Keynote, Pixelmator and more can store your work and sync it to all your devices. You can even share specific files and folders for collaboration.
If you pay for a lot of storage space or you subscribe to the Apple One Family or Premier bundles, you can share the features with your penny-pinching friends and family. If you have someone who’s clumsy with their devices or cavalier with their photos and you don’t want to see them broken-hearted losing all their memories without a backup, you can set up Family Sharing.
They won’t be able to see your photos and you won’t be able to see theirs — but it will let them use a bit of your cloud storage for their device backups, photos, messages and more.
Go to Settings, tap on your name at the top, tap Family, and from here you can add up to five people to your family sharing plan.
Read all about the benefits of family sharing here.
Technically speaking, your account is called an Apple Account. iCloud is the name of the service that offers features like syncing your photos and messages, mail and Find My — all of which are part of your Apple Account.
Every Apple Account comes with 5 GB of free storage, which isn’t much to go around. Modern photos and videos can quickly fill it up.
The US prices (as of 2025) are:
If you subscribe to the Apple One bundle, the cost of storage is grouped together with additional services and features:
You can access your data from the web using any modern browser. Just go to icloud.com, click Sign In and enter your Apple Account.
An iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch can only be signed into iCloud using one Apple Account at a time. You can check in Settings by tapping your name on the top of the screen.
A Mac can have multiple users, and thus can be signed into multiple accounts at once. Each user account can sign in from System Settings.
If you forget the password, you can easily reset it from any iPhone, iPad or Mac already signed into the same account. All you need to know is your device’s passcode — which you probably know by heart. Open Settings and click on your name at the top of the screen, tap Sign-In & Security and tap Change Password. You’ll have to enter the passcode for your device, then you can enter a new password for your Apple Account and iCloud.
If you don’t have access to any devices signed into your Apple Account, you can always go to iforgot.apple.com.
If you have an iPad and a Windows PC, that’s okay. With the iCloud for Windows app, you can sync your photos, files, passwords, contacts, calendars and bookmarks all to your computer.
The iCloud Passwords extension for Chrome and Edge even make autofilling your sign-in information as easy as on your iPhone.
If you have feedback on a feature that should work differently, or if you find a bug, you can report feedback to Apple. Open the Feedback app on your iPhone or iPad, Feedback Assistant on the Mac, or go to apple.com/feedback.
Be sure to be highly descriptive, explaining what’s wrong or what you suggest in the most precise possible terms. Learn more about how to leave the best feedback for Apple here.
Tulsi Gabbard, the new U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI), said a demand from the UK government that Apple build a backdoor to access the contents of encrypted iCloud files worldwide constitutes “a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy.”
She then indicated that the UK would not be allowed to spy on Americans in this way.
Apple moved toward deactivating its Advanced Data Protection iCloud privacy-protection feature for iCloud in the United Kingdom. The move is a stopgap measure instead of giving the UK government what it demanded: a “backdoor” way to break the encryption offered by the feature so it could secretly surveil its citizens.
The problem is, this move won’t fully satisfy the UK government, who wants to be able to spy on the iCloud accounts of any Apple user in any country.
You can use the iCloud website to access all of your online Apple services from any computer, tablet or phone. This includes Find My, Mail, Photos, Invites, Files, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Notes, Calendar and Reminders. It’s really convenient if you need to find a lost device, print a file or download a picture from a different computer you’re not signed into.
The iCloud website provides easy access to all of Apple’s cloud services — and it’s even customizable for those who use it often. Let me show you how it works.
Apple offers end-to-end encryption for many more types of iCloud data than it once did. Advanced Data Protection encrypts iCloud Photos, Notes, iCloud Backup and more. But you have to activate the feature to take advantage of the data protection. It is easy … once you find the switch buried in Settings.
We can save you some time. Here’s how and why you should activate it.
The government of the United Kingdom reportedly wants a backdoor into Apple accounts so it can spy on any iPhone or Mac user anywhere. It allegedly ordered Apple to allow it to access everything from any iCloud account globally, breaking the encryption protection on the files.
Apple is fighting the order.
Apple is reportedly launching an iCloud-powered events and invite service called “Confetti” inside the company as soon as this week. The feature will enable users to invite their friends and families to upcoming parties and functions.
The move is part of Apple’s plan to revamp its Calendar app.
Find My iPhone, a feature available in Apple’s Find My app, will help you locate your lost phone. You can find it using any other Apple device you own or by borrowing a friend’s device. You can even ping your iPhone from your Apple Watch.
From Find My, you can also remotely lock down your lost iPhone, put the device into a special Lost Mode, or even wipe its contents. You should take a peek at this incredibly useful app before you have to.
Keep reading or watch our video.
You can back up your text messages (and iMessages) with iMessage Exporter, a free tool for the Mac. Whether you want to preserve your family message history for sentimental reasons, or need to keep conversation records for business, iMessage Exporter will get the job done.
You might already back up your messages in iCloud, but Apple charges an arm and a leg for space. You can save space (and money) by making a local backup and clearing out your cloud storage.
Keep reading or watch our video to see how.
The UK consumer-advocacy group Which? accused Apple of forcing iPhone and iPad owners to use iCloud, and then overcharging them for the service.
It’s asking for a hefty £3 billion ($3.8 billion) in compensation. That’s about £70 per consumer.
Skip the hassle of manually sending your family all the vacation photos — enable a shared iCloud Photo library instead. Everyone in your family automatically gets all the family photos as if the images were in their own camera roll — in full quality.
Your iPhone will identify faces in photos (securely and privately), and any pictures of people who are in the family will be added to the shared library. If all of your phones are in the same place while you’re taking a lot of pictures, even if you aren’t in them (like at an aquarium or a museum), those pictures will be added automatically, too. As you’re shooting in the camera, you can easily toggle between the shared library for everyone and the private photo library on your own devices.
Starting a Shared Photo Library with your family is the best way to organize family photos. Continue reading to see how to turn it on.
October 12, 2011: Apple launches iCloud, a service that lets users automatically and wirelessly store content and push it to their various devices.
iCloud’s arrival marks the end of Apple’s Mac-centric “digital hub” strategy — and ushers in an age of inter-device communication and non-localized files.
iCloud+ is Apple’s most successful service by a wide margin, according to an analysts’ report released Monday. Seems plenty of iPhone and Mac users are willing to pay for more than the 5GB of free storage available.
Adoption rates for the Mac-maker’s other services might surprise some people: A third of all Apple users subscribe to Apple TV+, for example.
August 4, 2008: In an internal memo, Steve Jobs owns up to mistakes in launching MobileMe, spinning Apple’s bungled cloud service rollout as a learning opportunity.
“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” Jobs writes in an email to Apple employees. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”
The Apple One subscription bundle lets users save money on Apple’s subscription services like Apple Music, Apple TV+ and iCloud+ storage. The company offers three Apple One configurations. Check pricing on Apple One’s three tiers — Individual, Family and Premier — and find out what you get for your money (and, most importantly, how much you can save).
Update: Late Saturday, more than two days after the iCloud Private Relay problem first cropped up, Apple fixed it.
If you’ve received repeated notifications that iCloud Private Relay is inactive on one of your Apple devices, it’s not a problem with your internet connection or network. The problem is on Apple’s end.
The issue has persisted since Thursday afternoon and into Friday morning, and might be slowing down your web browsing.
It’s now possible to transfer images and videos stored on Google Photos directly into iCloud Photos. Apple and Google cooperated to make this possible.
Wow, these two rivals actually worked together on something.
July 1, 2012: Apple shuts down its MobileMe web service, pushing users to switch to iCloud.
Launched in 2008, Apple’s subscription-based suite of online services and software includes features like Find My iPhone, a MobileMe photo gallery, chat facilities, an online calendar, storage and other cloud-based services.
After letting it limp along for four years, Cupertino finally decides to pull the plug, giving MobileMe users until the end of July to remove their data from the service.
If you have a family, odds are you share a house, furniture, car and more. But you might not give as much attention to what you share in your digital lives, even if your digital pictures and purchases are equally valuable. Luckily, Apple Family Sharing makes it easy to share photos, movies, apps and more.
It just takes a little bit of setup to share iCloud’s fantastic Family Sharing feature. Here are the top six benefits of using it.
It’s possible to remove an Apple ID from your iPhone without a password using UnlockGo.
You can unlock iCloud Activation Lock without a password or the previous owner, remove a forgotten Screen Time passcode without data loss, bypass MDM locks and more. It’s a really powerful app and it’s available for both Mac and PC.
If you get a second-hand iPhone but find out the seller didn’t fully reset it beforehand, UnlockGo will fix it. Here’s how it works.
You can share passwords on iPhone automatically with your entire family, so you don’t have to reuse the same password everywhere or let everyone in your family know when a shared password is changed.
Setting up this feature is easy and saves the hassle of being texted “hey I can’t get into Amazon, what’s that password again?” and “I need you to send me the code.” When you set up shared passwords, two-factor authentication and passkeys are shared, too.
It’s a huge time-saver, and highly recommended.
Here’s how to set it up.
Apple offers iCloud plans for iPhone and Mac users who need a bit of extra storage capacity, and other plans for those who want a huge amount. But there’s a noticeable gap in the middle the company should really fill.
The lack of a 1TB iCloud+ storage plan is painfully evident. Adding it would be a boon to many users, and to Apple, too.
Today is World Backup Day — a fine opportunity to lobby for the additional tier.
The maximum capacity of an Apple iCloud+ account just expanded from 2 terabytes to 12 terabytes. There’s also a new 6TB option. Either one is a heap of storage for Mac, iPad and iPhone user to hold images, videos and other files.
The storage plans also come with useful bonus features, many of which are focused on privacy.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: We dissect all the biggest reveals from Apple’s “Wonderlust” event, which brought us new iPhones, Apple Watches and more. And we stare unafraid at the results of our Wonderlust predictions. We have a winner!
Also on The CultCast:
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
Apple added two tiers to iCloud+ online storage, allowing Mac and iPhone users to keep as much as 12 terabytes of data on the service. That’s six times as much as before.
The storage plans also come with additional features, many of which are focused on privacy.
Apple gave a more complete explanation of why it cancelled a plan to scan iCloud Photos libraries for child sexual abuse material. It’s the same reason it gave back in 2022, but with more detail.
It all comes down to user privacy, and the potential for the system to be abused by hackers and repressive governments.