For the past few days, I was getting notifications that my backup could not be completed due to insufficient space on iCloud. So I have checked apps that were consuming most of the storage by going to:
Settings | iCloud | Manage Storage | Backups | Username’s Phone
Here I could see that Photo Library and WhatsApp were the two largest space consumers in the list. (Unfortunately, I haven’t taken the screenshot for you to see this here). So, I have decided to clear many WhatsApp chats from various media, along with many items from my Photo Library. After I have backed up my Photo Library I have deleted almost all pictures from the phone. Even then I could see that the iPhone was still showing the wrong numbers for the next backup.
For instance, I have opened WhatsApp | Data and Storage | Storage Usage and I could see here that WhatsApp was using less than 20MB of storage, while the iCloud backup was still showing more than 1GB for WhatsApp, even though it was stripped down a bit but not much after I have cleared WhatsApp chats.
The same was with Photo Library, even though I had roughly 300MB of pictures and videos, iCloud was showing that Photo Library has more than 2GB of data to be backed up.
The current size was 4.65GB and my next backup was showing additional 1GB of required free storage and therefore I was getting warnings of used iCloud storage. At that point, I was close to buying additional iCloud storage as suggested but then I thought again as I was a bit skeptical about this.
What I did was:
Open Settings | Click on your iCloud username on the top | iCloud | iCloud Backup
Now scroll down and delete click to Delete Backup
Now go to:
Settings | iCloud | iCloud Backup (it is currently set to OFF)
Now go back to:
Settings | iCloud | Manage Storage | Backups | Username’s Phone
Check the Next Backup Size which is now in my case 1,59GB, not 6,50GB that was before.
Now go back to:
Settings | Click on your iCloud username on the top | iCloud | iCloud Backup
Click Back Up Now to do a new backup. (Make sure you are connected to power supply and to a wireless network)
That should do the trick. I am guessing this is just another Apple gimmick to trick users into buying the additional storage space they don’t necessarily need.