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How Jottacloud works with iCloud Photo Library
How Jottacloud works with iCloud Photo Library

How backup of photos and videos works with iCloud

Updated over 4 years ago


Jottacloud on iOS works with iCloud Photo Library. This means that we will back up ALL your photos if you have enabled iCloud Photo Library on your iOS device. Even the ones you store on iCloud.

You can verify that iCloud is enabled under "Settings" --> "Photos" on your iOS device:

When you turn on iCloud Photo Library on your iOS device, Jottacloud will display and back up all photos stored on your iCloud account.

iCloud and optimised iPhone storage

iCloud gives you the option to Optimise iPhone Storage which mean that iCloud will replace the original photos and videos with optimised lower-resolution versions. 

If optimised iPhone storage is enabled, please be aware of the following:

  • The Jottacloud app will have to download the originals before the app will back them up to Jottacloud. 

  • Backup will be slower and more data will be transferred. In this case we recommend doing uploads only when connected to WIFI.

  • Even if the photo have been uploaded to Jottacloud before (i.e. from another device or our old app), we still need to download the original to checksum the file and verify that it is already uploaded. We will not upload files that are already uploaded.

  • If the iCloud storage is bigger than the device storage, the device will run out of space. Please read more below.

If you want to backup your files with both iCloud and Jottacloud, we recommend that you chose the Download and Keep Originals options. This means the original files are already stored on your iOS device and this makes backups in Jottacloud a lot faster.

If iCloud library is bigger than your device storage

If you have a iCloud library that is bigger than the device storage, you have the following options to be able to use Jottacloud:

  1. Turn off iCloud on the device

  2. Migrate from iCloud to Jottacloud

You can migrate from iCloud to Jottacloud by uploading the photos and videos stored in you iCloud Library and then delete them from you iCloud account. This can be done the following way from your phone:

  1. Start backup of photos from the Jottacloud app

  2. If phone run out of storage, stop the backup in Jottacloud

  3. Free up space from the device (remember to remove files from Recently Deleted!)

  4. Repeat step 1 - 3 till all photos have been backed up and you cant free up any more space

An alternative to migrating on your phone, is to backup the iCloud photos on your Mac.

  1. Open the Photos app on Mac

  2. Open Preferences

  3. Select the "iCloud" tab

  4. Enable "iCloud Photo Library" and make sure the "Download Originals to this Mac" is selected

  5. Add Photos library to Jottacloud backup (the library is usually in the "Pictures" folder on your Mac)

  6. Turn off iCloud on your device

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