How Much Free Storage You Get and Where It Goes
Okay so this is the lesson where we talk about the two-dollar fee I keep mentioning, and I want to actually break down the numbers so it's not just me saying "trust me."
Here's where things stand for free storage, roughly, because these numbers do shift a little:
iCloud gives you 5 GB free. Total. That's it. And that 5 GB isn't just photos, it's your phone backups, your messages, documents, everything Apple is storing for you. Five gigs disappears fast. I've seen people fill it in a few months if they're taking a lot of video, because video eats storage way faster than regular photos do.
Google Photos gives you 15 GB free, but same deal, that's shared across your whole Google account. Gmail lives in there too. If you've got ten years of email sitting in your inbox, that's eating into your photo storage space without you even realizing it.
So sooo, this is the part where people's eyes glaze over a little, but stick with me because it matters.
Where the free space actually goes
Think of it like a closet. You've got one closet (5 GB or 15 GB depending on what you picked) and everything you own has to fit in there. Your photos, your videos, your backed-up text messages, your documents, all of it, sharing the same shelf space.
Video is the big one. A few minutes of video at a birthday party can eat more space than a hundred regular photos. If you're the person who records dance recitals or soccer games, you're going to hit your free limit a lot faster than someone who mostly takes still photos of their pickles (that's me, and even I'm getting close some months).
What happens when you hit the limit
Your backup just stops. It doesn't warn you in a big dramatic way, it just quietly stops uploading new photos. And this is exactly the situation we talked about a few lessons back, the "storage full" message, except now it's happening in the cloud instead of on your phone. You could take a hundred pictures at a family reunion thinking they're all safe, and none of them are backing up because your cloud closet is full.
That's why I check my storage every so often. On iPhone it's Settings, tap your name at the top, then iCloud, and there's a little bar that shows you how full you are. On Google Photos, you tap your profile picture in the top corner, and it'll show you how much space you've used out of your total.
The two-dollar thing
I feel like people spend way more time and energy avoiding this fee than the fee is actually worth. Both Apple and Google offer a paid tier that bumps you up to 200 GB (sometimes even the 100 GB tier is enough) for around two or three dollars a month. That's less than a lot of people spend on a drink at the gas station.
I've watched people delete photos they actually wanted to keep, or turn backup off entirely, just to dodge that charge. And then they lose something that mattered because the safety net wasn't on. I feel like your time, and your memories, are worth more than two bucks. Pay it. Turn on backup. Stop thinking about it.
If two dollars a month is a genuine stretch for your budget right now, that's a different conversation and a fair one, and there's no shame in staying on the free tier and just managing your space carefully. But for most people in this room, it's not a budget issue. It's a "I don't want to think about it" issue. Think about it for five minutes now instead of losing photos later.
A practical trick for checking without getting overwhelmed
Audrey, my daughter, figured this out faster than I did, actually. She went into the storage settings on her own phone and found this breakdown that shows exactly what's taking up space, photos versus videos versus messages versus random app data. I didn't even know that screen existed until she showed me. I just stood there a little proud and a little useless while my own kid taught me something about my own hobby.
So go find that breakdown on your phone. It'll tell you exactly what's eating your closet space, and then you can decide if you need to upgrade or if you've just got some cleaning up to do (we'll get to the cleaning up part in a later lesson, don't worry about it yet).
Before next time
Go check your storage bar, either in iCloud settings or in your Google Photos profile, and just see how close you are to full. You don't need to fix anything yet. Just know your number.