iPhone not uploading to iCloud

Paleface · Apr 19, 2016

I have a iPhone 5s and it never seems to upload anything to my iCloud. I have a ton of free space (like around 50GB) so that's not the issue.

I have my photos, contacts, notes, etc. turned on in the iCloud section of the settings, but it just doesn't seem to work properly. When I open the iCloud Drive app, it's blank and says I have zero items. My phone is connected to wifi whenever I'm home, and is plugged into the charger and connected to wifi all night while sleeping.

I've had this issue ever since I got the phone, and attempted to figure out what the problem was a while back but gave up. Now I really want to get the thing going because it's starting to piss me off, especially since I pay extra to have 50 GB of storage.

scifan57 · Apr 19, 2016

What happens if you log out of your iCloud account, then log back in again?

J. A. · Apr 19, 2016

iCloud Drive does not show contacts, notes or photos, even if you've enabled these in iCloud.

In Settings - iCloud - iCloud Drive, you can see which apps are able to save files to iCloud Drive. Pages, Numbers and Keynotes are among them. If there's nothing enabled in that list, you won't see any content in iCloud Drive.

If you wish to see your contacts or photos, login to www.icloud.com, using a browser on your computer. That's where you can take a look at them.

Paleface · May 23, 2016

scifan57 said:
What happens if you log out of your iCloud account, then log back in again?

Sorry for the late response. I've tried logging out and logging in before as somebody mention that as a possible fix in the past. I just did so again today as you requested and I haven't noticed any changes yet.

Paleface · May 23, 2016

J. A. said:
iCloud Drive does not show contacts, notes or photos, even if you've enabled these in iCloud.

In Settings - iCloud - iCloud Drive, you can see which apps are able to save files to iCloud Drive. Pages, Numbers and Keynotes are among them. If there's nothing enabled in that list, you won't see any content in iCloud Drive.

If you wish to see your contacts or photos, login to www.icloud.com, using a browser on your computer. That's where you can take a look at them.

Inside of settings I have everything turned on that's possible to upload and save to iCloud.

So are you saying that I cannot view photos or videos with the iCloud Drive app that's on my iPhone? That seems kind of ridiculous, one of the main reasons that I need iCloud for is to store media onto it since my iPhone is running out of storage space itself.

So how can I using my iPhone to look at everything that is stored in my iCloud (including pictures and videos)?

J. A. · May 23, 2016

The pictures and videos on your iPhone are also in iCloud. If you delete them from your device, they will also disappear from iCloud, and it won't be possible to retrieve them again.

You can use iCloud for syncing photos and videos, but not for storing them. If you wish to remove them from your iPhone, load them to online storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, ...), or save them to your computer.

Paleface · May 24, 2016

Weird. Guess I thought the iCloud was cooler and more functional than I thought. I didn't know it wasn't a storage space, but only a mirror of your device. I always hear people make comments like "don't worry, it's up in the cloud now... Safe forever". Didn't know if you delete it from your phone, then it also removes it from the iCloud. That actually seems really stupid and kinda a waist of a good technology. So things in the cloud aren't "safe forever", their just safe as long as it's also on your phone? So it's essentially just a redundant collection of media and information?

I assumed you could store more than what's on your phone, especially since they offer the purchasing of more iCloud space than there's room on your phone for.

This is my first iPhone, in the past I've been all android. It's shocking some of the limitations this device has compared to android's I'm finding out the hard way. I have been using Flickr to store and automatically upload my pictures, but one thing it has a problem with is the uploading and saving of videos which they keep saying they're going to fix but they haven't quite got the bugs out yet.

Thanks for the info

Paleface · May 24, 2016

I actually just noticed that Flickr has started to upload my videos! That's good news, this might've just sold most of my problems. Although playback is a little slow from with in Flickr, and I still need to look into how to go about sharing a single video or image with others.