If I cancel my iCloud subscription, will all my storage convert to my phone’s storage automatically?

I had an iphone 12. It did not have enough storage so I paid a monthly subscription for icloud storage. I now have an iphone 17 with a ton of extra storage. There’s currently 122 gb in icloud storage. But I have a little less than 100 gb on my phone’s storage at the moment with the ability to have up to 512gb. In other words, I don’t need icloud storage anymore because I have plenty of space on my new phone. If I cancel, will everything that’s stored in the icloud just shift to my phone’s storage? Or will I have to manually download things back to my phone? How does this work?

iPhone 12, iOS 26

Posted on Oct 16, 2025 3:48 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 17, 2025 7:46 AM

iCloud is a sync service, unless you have options like Optimize Storage turned on for Photos for example, then everything exists on your iPhone already.


If you are using the Optimize Storage Option, then turn it off in Settings ➜ Apps ➜ Photos ➜ Optimizer Storage.

This will download the full quality versions of photos and videos to the iPhone that were not already there.


For other content, go into the Files App, and copy any Files you want to keep from the iCloud Drive section on Browse, to the "On My iPhone" section.


If you have a computer, you can log in to https://icloud.com and download anything from there.


For more details click here ➜ Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud - Apple Support


4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 17, 2025 7:46 AM in response to alexiskemfort

iCloud is a sync service, unless you have options like Optimize Storage turned on for Photos for example, then everything exists on your iPhone already.


If you are using the Optimize Storage Option, then turn it off in Settings ➜ Apps ➜ Photos ➜ Optimizer Storage.

This will download the full quality versions of photos and videos to the iPhone that were not already there.


For other content, go into the Files App, and copy any Files you want to keep from the iCloud Drive section on Browse, to the "On My iPhone" section.


If you have a computer, you can log in to https://icloud.com and download anything from there.


For more details click here ➜ Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud - Apple Support


Oct 17, 2025 9:21 AM in response to Phil0124

Phil0124 wrote: …If you are using the Optimize Storage Option, then turn it off in Settings ➜ Apps ➜ Photos ➜ Optimizer Storage.
This will download the full quality versions of photos and videos to the iPhone that were not already there.

This is not exactly true for a Mac, and I imagine it's not true for a phone, but I haven't tried it. When "Optimize" is switched to "Download Originals," Photos brings in the larger original files as needed, and there's no easy way to tell if all the pictures' files have arrived, yet.


However, in any case, when you turn off iCloud Photos, there will be a scary warning sign


that then lets you either remove the preview versions or download the the originals. If you have room on your phone, then you should choose Download. If there's not enough room on the phone to handle all the big picture files, then you should use a computer to get them from iCloud.com.


I found it scary just to get to this point on my phone, but Cancel worked well…

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If I cancel my iCloud subscription, will all my storage convert to my phone’s storage automatically?

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