Phone A is my phone as a mom. Phone B is the phone my 15yo uses. Both iPhones.

Background
15yo previous phone died. It can no longer turn on. We shopped for new phones, and got a new one.

At first, I was going to get the newer phone for myself (B), and my carrier began loading my stuff onto it. Plan was for my child to take my 'old' phone (A)

As we proceeded, we needed to go home to finish up on wifi. It hit me that I didn't mind my child getting the newer phone. I use my phone a lot at work, and I was having an extremely busy week--it was a hassle to switch. I'll get an upgrade later.

We got home and arranged for the carrier to switch our phones (at the phone number level). This happened successfully. (A) never really changed hands, had all my stuff on it through this process. (B) went from mine to hers (My iCloud existed on both phones for a little bit) by logging out of my iCloud and logging into hers. And again, the carrier support matched this process.

Problem
Phone A is mine, all good
Phone B is my child's, and it has my contacts

Her iCloud has her contacts. For example, I can log in to her Cloud on PC and see all of her own stuff there.

Everything else, besides contacts, seemed to move over for her, phone B seems to have all her stuff.

What step do I take to sync her backup to her phone, and NOT sync what's on her phone to her iCloud?

I’m about to buy a new laptop today and I am gonna get iCloud cuz I wanted to transfer some videos and pics to my new pc

However I was googling iCloud and saw someone on Reddit a while back say if you transfer stuff from iCloud to a pc that it’ll be deleted off your phone?

I thought I could keep the stuff In iCloud but download copies to my pc so I can have a backup?

Ideally I’d wanna transfer copies to my laptop and then save on usb drives as back up back up

hello , i cannot find my old messages anymore . I really need to see them since they were the messages between me and my bf who just passed away last saturday . I wanna keep all of our memories . We have been talking on there for a year and I can only find messages from this may

Hi Folks,
I’ve encountered a problem I just can’t sort out.
My buddy is missing the notes app in his iCloud Account.

iPad and iPhone don’t show the iCloud option, even though the sync is enabled within the iCloud settings.
So he logged in to his iCloud account and we realised there’s no notes app.

So far, I found no way to fix it for him…
Are there any ideas on this problem?

hey everyone!

i recently upgraded my phone from 128gb to 1tb and i want to cancel my icloud subscription (200gb).

however when i try to cancel it keeps saying "iphone was not able to download full-resolution photos and videos. low-resolution versions will be removed" and im not sure what it means. my icloud is full so syncing is currently paused as well (about 3k photos are not synced). does this mean if i cancel all photos will be gone?

is there any way to cancel subscription and make sure everything is stored in my 1tb phone? i've seen recommendations on copying to external drive but im not sure on how to move back everything to my 1tb phone. sorry if the questions are dumb i dont have much experience with iphone 🥹 thanks in advance guys

I have a contact saved in my phone from probably 10-11 years ago that I haven’t text since then. If I send the # a text/imessage will the old thread reappear or will it start a new thread?

Just to me? App Files on iPhone/iPad/Web no show all folders avaliable on search. In this example, thousands folders they should, but only 27 are show

salut chers amis le mardi dernier j’ai créé mon compte iCloud à peine avoir fini de créer le compte je reçois une notification de mise à jour dans les paramètres après plusieurs tentatives je suis notifié que mon compte est verrouillé plusieurs tentatives de récupération sur le site de Apple mais sans aucun résultat je suis en Côte d’Ivoire aidez moi svp

I decided to turn off everything on iCloud Drive last week because photos and files would duplicate or re-download onto my MacBook and I also wanted to make more room for storage. Then everything was smooth sailing, not being bothered about my storage being full and continue to work and stuff. But then cut to today and I decided to turn it back on because I thought it had to do something to me not being able to connect my devices to Air Drop. Then all of a sudden all my desktop folders disappeared. In a panic I turned everything BACK OFF in the iCloud Drive settings then random shit happens. Long story short I'm stuck with a whole mess of duplicated flies and missing files. And alsoI think most of my files are now in the iCloud instead of my Mac now.

Hopefully this makes sense to read and please reach out if you know the solution or experienced this. thank you

Summery:

I turned ON and OFF all the iCloud Drive settings and was met with some missing files and some duplicates of other files.

I have the funniest screenshot of iCloud struggling to sync 956 bytes (sub doesn't allow images). I certainly prefer Apple's iCloud over anything from Microslop and Google's nosy ahh, but still it seems like syncing on iCloud continues to get worse and worse.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue with loading attachments in iMessages? Error message: “Unable to download item. There was an error downloading this item.” I’ve thoroughly researched and tried all available troubleshooting methods, both basic and advanced, but the problem persists regardless of the file type (photos, PDFs, GIFs, etc.). It displays the attachment icon in the messages thread with the file name and size. I don’t think this is an iOS-device-specific issue because it’s happening across all my devices (iPadOS and macOS) where I use iMessage. My primary device is an iPhone 17 Pro Max on the latest version 26.5.2 (no beta). My messages are synced with iCloud, and it has been for years. iMessage is also using a significant amount of iCloud storage space, but I’m nowhere near my storage limit. The earliest message I found where attachments weren’t loading was in May 2026, but it’s affecting both new and old messages, which is my estimate of when this likely started. I’m checking this channel before contacting Apple Support, but I’m not sure if they’ll offer any different troubleshooting options than what I’ve already tried. Any thoughts?

I am trying to set up an auxiliary account for the purpose of syncing contacts between two icloud accounts. I want to setup @icloud.com account but there does not seem to be away to do that. Does anyone know of a way to do that? I want to avoid using another mail provider.

I was fine with ios 26.5.2 but upgraded to ios 27 public beta three days ago. after some hours i decided to go back as it caused lags and screen freezing. Downloaded ios 26.5.2 version from site and returned back to version from the iTunes through restore.

This turned out to be a nightmare when i logged in to my iCloud during setup it failed to load my old device backup from iCloud. I setup my phone as new in a hope that settings and other passwords etc are not of that importance and i will be restoring WhatsApp from backup and other files and photos will auto sync.

However, since then none of my backups, Photos, Files from iCloud drive are syncing.
theser are the options i used to get on track but all failed
1- Upgraded to iOS 27 PB Again (No LUCK)
2- Upgraded to iOS 26.6 beta 2 and then again on iOS 26.6 BETA 5 (no Luck)
3- Installed a fresh install again to 26.5.2 (no Luck)

4- Turned On/Off Advance Data Protection 4-5 times (no luck)

Now when I log into icloud.com it instantly logs me out or if i access photos through icloud.com/photos it shows grey thumbnails and on clicking it says server error and logs me out.

the Contact Key Verification in profile section on iPhone stays on Waiting
iMessages are not working fine.

I am in a mess. Can someone help me out on this

Hi Folks,

First off, this is not a backup question. I do full backups including offsite storage, so please don't go down that rabbit hole. I just need to get iCloud syincing to complete my migration to MacOS.

Left Windows for Mac last year and have been holding on to OneDrive for no good reason. It's worked flawlessly on Mac for me, but I need to cut my subscriptions, so Office365 isn't being renewed on 8/2 when it expires (I'm paying for 2tb if iCloud because my kids can't delete photos from their phones). There's 1.5TB of space available on iCloud, and I'm only looking to move about 62gb of stuff (combination of pics and files).

My Macbook Air only has 512gb of storage, and while I don't have tons of files (about 62gb), I don't want all that stuff saved to the Mac that I don't use regularly. I have a Win11 gaming PC that has TONS of storage, and it was the spot I saved OneDrive to locally, and on the Mac I had it set to only download when needed. This generally worked great.

So to migrate, I installed iCloud for Windows on the Win11 gaming PC. Set iCloud for Win to always save locally, then On the Win 11 PC, I copied everything in the Documents folder from the OneDrive folder to the iCloud folder. Roughly 3,200 files, and I watched it syncing. Got to 200 left and took a dump, with those last 200 or so files never syncing from the Windows PC to iCloud.

I've started and stopped iCloud on the Win11 machine. I've rebooted it. Nothing seems to get these last 200 or so files to sync. They don't show up in Finder on the Mac or on the web iCloud (which makes sense, as they never synced form the Win11 PC). I've tried copying them again with no success. I've aslo checked to ensure the full path isn't over 255 characters, and it's not even close. It's random files in random folders, with nothing in common that I can see. Uploading via browser to iCloud sucks because you apparently can't upload entire folders - just files.

Any thoughts? I'm stumped at this point. I tried copying a couple form OneDrive on the Macbook to the iCloud folder, but that resulted in duplicates on the Win 11 machine. I subsequently removed OneDrive from the Mac, but can put it back if that's my only recourse. Was hoping for a better solution.

I was given a work iPhone when I moved a new country. I was required to set it up with my work email address for the Apple ID. I downloaded quite a few apps for personal use (local banking, crypto, shopping etc) for this new country on the work phone since these apps are not available on my personal Apple ID as it’s still registered in another region.

So Ik u can get like free unlimited iCloud on like a 21 day free thing and it’s designed for if ur switching to a new device but can I use this if I want to save my iCloud cuz im handing my phone to a store for a battery replacement

Hello, so I got iCloud 200gb bc I have over 20k photos and wanted them safe incase anything happened to my phone. I have the same iCloud signed in on my ipad except I don’t want the pics to show on my iPad.is there a way I can remove my iPad from syncing?

Okay so I have the whole Apple ecosystem. And noticed that I have about 30GB in messages in the cloud. I went in about 6 months ago and tried deleting everything on all my devices but there were all still there. ( yes I checked the recently deleted folder and deleted those as well) so I finally said heck with it and toggles on the option to turn off iCloud messages and delete. And of course, I was giving an option to download and they would be permanently deleted after 30 days. Well fast forward to 30 days and it still says I have those messages and they are scheduled to delete. And I had time to save those messages. ( I don’t want them saved I want them gone ; to clear space ) lol. Now we are here and I’ve logged out. Did a factory reset and everything and they just seem not to delete. Any ideas on how to fix this issue?

I receive sms from apple like this

You can now update your Apple Account phone number at the Apple iForgot website.

Be sure to do this before 21/07.

Today again:

Reminder: You have 1 day (until 21/07) to update your phone number at the Apple iForgot website.

Its scam or not?

I was clearing up space on my MacBook and then realized one of the files I emptied from my trash bin was important so i check on icloud.com and what did i see? My files. I then clicked recover and where did they go? God knows where. I talked to apple support about it and they couldn't do anything about it. Anyone had this problem before?

Hello,

I have a camera and I am backing up the contents on both my PC, an external SSD and the iCloud Drive. Files can stay on my PC for a short period of time though, eventually I'd like to delete them. However, some sources said that if I were to delete the local files on PC, they'd be deleted from the Drive as well. Is it true? If true, can we bypass it?

Also I came across this setting, if relevant

"Your files stored in iCloud Drive will sync to their own folder in File Explorer"

Thanks in advance ^^

where do you guys store your photos? icloud won’t stop asking me for money, and i want to continue to keep my photos. i know nothing about computers, IT, storage. so please dumb it down for me

IS THERE ANYYYY WAY to get them back??

Literally, they were all visible on my ipad but not on my phone, so I thought oh let me turn on sync notes to icloud so that I can get these ones moved over to my phone.

AND WHEN I DID THAT IT WIPED EVERYTHING. Now my iPad only shows the same 30 recent notes that were visible on my phone, but all the like 500 notes that were JUST THERE on my ipad have disappeared.

I’ve already tried turning the sync to icloud off again, that just shows 0 notes in the notes app when i do that.

Theres apparently 0 stored “on my ipad”, but that confuses me because I had made new notes on my iPad while the sync to icloud was turned off, so I would have thought that me turning it on would sync all the ones on my ipad to iCloud too not just download the latest iCloud ones and delete everything else????

I’ve also already tried checking recently deleted (nothing there), I’ve checked icloud online (that only shows the same notes visible on my iphone), and no, unfortunately I don’t have a backup for my iPad because I turned it off to save storage.

I’m a seriousssss note user so thats literally like 10 years of memories, rants, diary entries, arguments. It’s also where I stored information so I wouldnt forget it (like random passwords / usernames for some apps and stuff that I dont remember off the top of my head) so this is a huge stresser for me I rlly dont wanna accept that they could be gone forever but it feels like thats the case.

Also lowkey fuming that apple doesnt have a huge “DONT TURN ON SYNC TO ICLOUD WE WILL DELETE UR NOTES” bc then i would have never done that today. It was only a quick attempt to get the notes from my ipad to my phone. If I knew that syncing to iCloud would put my notes at risk then i would have made sure to have a backup saved before doing it.