It sometimes seems that what iOS 6, the new software upgrade for the iPhone and iPad, does best is sell more storage space in the cloud.
See if this sounds familiar: Every morning you are greeted with a notice on your phone: "Not Enough Storage," meaning nothing was backed up because you used up all the space allotted to your iCloud plan. If you use iOS 6, you've seen it, right?
The problem is that Apple's (AAPL) iCloud makes it a little too easy to save copies of your music, photos, contacts, calendars, videos and such for backup and sharing with other i devices and computers. When you set up an iPhone or iPad it asks you if you want to back up to iCloud. "Sure," you think. "Why not?"
Here's why: because backing up all of your devices means you will fill the free 5 gigabytes of iCloud storage in no time at all. In a common situation, users find themselves within weeks being asked by Apple to pay $20 for an additional 10 gigabytes, then weeks later $20 more for yet another 10 gigabytes, and still more weeks later topping out at $100 a year for the 50-gigabyte level.
This isn't an insidious plot. It's just that when you accept the easy setup, you may save multiple copies of your files as well as a lot of stuff you probably do not need. You can put your data on a diet, without risk of losing anything important. The trick is to be more selective in what you save.
First you have to find your fattest files. Go into your device and tap Settings. Scroll down to "iCloud" and tap it. Your iCloud account for this device should appear above a list of apps (we'll get to those). Scroll down past the apps to Storage & Backup, and tap that.
Now you should see how much storage is available on your plan. (There is going to be a lot of tapping, but bear with it; it will be worthwhile.)
Below that is a line that says Manage Storage. Tap it. Now you should see what devices are backing up to iCloud. In my case, an iPhone and iPad that I no longer own were taking up iCloud space. I deleted those, saving close to 2 gigabytes.
Now you can tap on the button showing the device you are holding. You will see when you most recently backed it up, and the size of that backup. Scroll down to the backup options. At the bottom you should see a line reading Show All Apps.
Touch Show All Apps and you will see a list of all the apps on the phone and how much space they are using, listed largest to smallest. Be prepared for some surprises. You will probably find that you are backing up data unnecessarily.
