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How to Find Out Which Documents Are Using Your iCloud Storage

It's all too easy to run out of iCloud storage, especially if you save a lot of documents in iCloud Drive. But when that does happen, Apple doesn't make it very easy to find out which documents are actually using up your space.

We'll show you how to find that out below.

View an Overview of Your iCloud Storage

You can view a simple overview of your iCloud storage from the Apple ID settings on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or web browser. This overview will tell you the total amount of iCloud storage your documents are using.

On an iPhone or iPad:

  1. Open the Settings and tap [Your Name] at the top of the screen.
  2. Tap iCloud > Manage Storage to see what's using your storage.

On a Mac:

  1. Click the Apple logo and open the System Preferences.
  2. Go to Apple ID and select iCloud in the sidebar.
  3. A storage usage chart appears at the bottom of the window, click Manage for more details.

On a web browser:

  1. Go to the iCloud website and sign in with your Apple ID account.
  2. Click Account Settings to view a chart of your iCloud storage usage.

Unfortunately, you can't get much in the way of details from this storage overview. It tells you how much space you're using for documents, photos, backups, and other files. But you can't find out exactly which folders and files are using up your space in the documents section.

How to View Individual Document Sizes in iCloud Drive

On an iPhone or iPad, you can use the Files app to browse all your documents in iCloud Drive. When you do this, you should see the file size for individual documents listed beneath their names.

You can even sort documents by size to see the largest files at the top.

However, the Files app doesn't tell you how big any folders are. It only tells you how many items are inside, counting sub-folders as a single item without counting the contents of that sub-folder as well.

If you have a lot of folders in iCloud Drive, this makes it incredibly time-consuming to find the individual files or folders taking up most of your iCloud storage.

The best way around this problem is to use Finder on a Mac.

How to Use Finder to View Folder Sizes in iCloud Drive

To view folder sizes in iCloud Drive—so you can work out which documents are using all your iCloud storage—you need to use Finder on a Mac.

If you don't own a Mac, find someone you can borrow one from and create a new macOS user account for yourself. Sign in with your Apple ID account to link it to iCloud Drive. Then remember to delete this account when you're finished looking at file sizes.

Now, open a new Finder window and select iCloud Drive from the sidebar. In the menu bar, go to View > as List. You should be able to see a column of file sizes, but for some bizarre reason Apple doesn't show any file sizes for folders by default.

Go to View > Show View Options. In the popup window, turn on each of the following options:

  • Always open in list view
  • Sort By: Size
  • Calculate all sizes (near the bottom)

Click Use as Defaults so this view remains the same as you open new folders in iCloud Drive. You can always change it back to your preferred settings at a later date.

You should now see folder sizes in the list. The largest folders should also appear at the top of the list, making it easy to navigate through your largest iCloud Drive folders to hone in on the documents or folders that are taking up the most storage.

Upgrade Your iCloud Storage

After finding out which documents are using your iCloud Drive storage, you can delete them or remove them from iCloud to reclaim your storage. However, you might decide that you're better off upgrading to get more space rather than deleting all your files.

Apple offers up to 2TB of iCloud storage. All you need to do is go to your Apple ID settings on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac and choose to buy more storage.

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