How to Delete Previous iCloud Backups (And Why It Matters)

iCloud storage fills up faster than most people expect. Old device backups — from iPhones you no longer own, iPads gathering dust, or even previous setups of your current device — quietly consume gigabytes of your storage allocation without you noticing. Knowing how to find and delete those backups is a straightforward skill, but the right approach depends on your specific devices, your backup habits, and how much risk you're comfortable taking.

What iCloud Backups Actually Are

When your iPhone or iPad backs up to iCloud, it creates a snapshot of your device's state: app data, settings, photos (if not separately managed), messages, and more. Each backup is tied to a specific device and labeled with that device's name and the date of the last backup.

iCloud gives you 5 GB of free storage by default. A single iPhone backup can range from a few hundred megabytes to several gigabytes depending on what's on the device. If you've upgraded phones over the years, you may have two, three, or more old backups sitting in your account — each one counting against that limit.

These backups don't disappear automatically when you get a new phone. Apple keeps them until you manually delete them or they go 180 days without a new backup being added (at which point Apple may remove them, though you shouldn't rely on this).

How to Delete iCloud Backups on iPhone or iPad

The most common way to manage backups is directly from your iOS or iPadOS device.

Steps:

1. Open Settings
2. Tap your name at the top (your Apple ID)
3. Tap iCloud
4. Tap Manage Account Storage (or Manage Storage on older iOS versions)
5. Tap Backups
6. You'll see a list of devices with stored backups — tap any device name
7. Tap Delete Backup, then confirm

Each backup entry shows the device name, the date of the last backup, and the size. This makes it easy to identify orphaned backups from old devices.

How to Delete iCloud Backups from a Mac

If you're on a Mac running macOS Catalina (10.15) or later, iCloud storage management moved out of iTunes and into System Settings.

Steps:

1. Open System Settings (or System Preferences on older macOS)
2. Click your Apple ID / name
3. Click iCloud
4. Click Manage (bottom right)
5. Select Backups from the sidebar
6. Choose the backup you want to remove and click Delete

On macOS Ventura and later, the interface is slightly reorganized, but the path through Apple ID → iCloud → Manage remains consistent.

How to Delete iCloud Backups from a Windows PC

If you use iCloud for Windows:

1. Open the iCloud for Windows app
2. Click Storage
3. Select Backup from the list
4. Choose the device backup and click Delete

The same backup data appears regardless of which device or platform you use to manage it — you're always looking at the same iCloud account.

What Gets Deleted vs. What Stays Safe 🗂️

This is where many people hesitate, and reasonably so.

Deleting a backup does not delete photos, contacts, or files stored elsewhere in iCloud (like iCloud Drive or iCloud Photos). Those live in separate parts of your storage. A backup is specifically the device snapshot — not your media library.

However, if you delete the backup for your current device and then need to restore (after a factory reset, for example), you'd be starting from scratch unless you have a local backup through Finder or iTunes.

Factors That Change the Equation 🔍

Not every situation is the same. A few variables shift how cautious you should be before deleting:

Device age and status: Deleting a backup for a phone you no longer own carries virtually no risk. Deleting the only backup of your current daily driver is a different calculation entirely.

What's in the backup: Some apps store critical data exclusively in iCloud backups — especially apps that don't support iCloud sync or third-party cloud storage. If you lose that backup and need to restore, that app data may be gone permanently.

Your iCloud storage tier: If you're on the free 5 GB plan and running out of space, deleting old backups is often the fastest fix. If you're on a 200 GB or 2 TB plan, storage pressure may not be the motivation at all — you might be cleaning up out of organization rather than necessity.

Whether you have local backups: If you regularly back up your iPhone to a Mac or PC via Finder or iTunes, you have a fallback. If iCloud is your only backup method, removing the current device backup leaves you exposed until the next automatic backup runs.

iOS version: The menu labels and navigation paths have shifted slightly across iOS 16, 17, and 18. The underlying steps are the same, but the exact wording in Settings may differ from what you see described in older guides.

The Part Only You Can Determine

Understanding the mechanics is the easy part. The harder question is which backups in your account are genuinely safe to delete right now — and that depends on which devices you still use, whether you have other backup options in place, and how you'd recover if something went wrong before your next backup runs.

Your iCloud backup list tells you the device name, last backup date, and size. Those three pieces of information — combined with your own knowledge of what's on each device — are what actually determine whether a deletion is risk-free or something to think through more carefully.