6 iCloud tips when cleaning your Mac
1 Keep favourites safe
Cloud services are generally reliable, but they aren’t perfect. If you have something irreplaceable, make sure you have a local backup on an external drive, and ideally another off-site.
2 Take care when deleting
Cloud-based syncing means you have the same files and photos everywhere; but it also means removing something from one place removes it from all your devices. Restore recently deleted files in Settings at iCloud.com.
3 Enough space
Storage on iCloud isn’t free. Apple gives you 5GB across all of your devices, and you then pay for additional space. However, as of macOS High Sierra and iOS 11, you can share the load across entire families if you sign up to the 200GB or 2TB tier.
4 Get into streaming
You can get back loads of space by simplifying your music collection. Back up and then trash local copies of iTunes music, then stream your favourites from Apple Music. Something missing? Restore just that from your backup.
5 Use iBooks
iBooks is useful for decluttering. It supports ePub and PDF, so it can house your digital docs, books and comics, which can be accessed across all your devices. (You may need to restart the app to have it ask if you want to use iCloud.)
6 Use prior to nuking
Over the page, we talk about starting from scratch on a Mac. If your most important documents are already in iCloud, that’ll give you a head start when it comes to getting your Mac going again after a clean install.