Speaker 1: A new Apple feature sinks your text messages across various devices,
Speaker 1: and it can free up some precious storage space on
Speaker 1: your iPhone. What's going on, I'm Rich Demiro. This is
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech Daily. Apple has released iOS eleven point four,
Speaker 1: which has several new features, but one in particular could
Speaker 1: make managing your text messages easier, especially if you have
Speaker 1: multiple Apple devices. As a bonus, it can help you
Speaker 1: free up some space consumed by your messages. The new
Speaker 1: feature is called Messages in iCloud. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: It was announced last year at WWDC. Now we're coming
Speaker 1: up to this year's WWDC and the feature was just launched.
Speaker 1: But I guess Apple wanted to get it right. So
Speaker 1: you might be thinking, wait a second, didn't iCloud always
Speaker 1: store my messages? Well, kind of sort of. Yes, No,
Speaker 1: it was really a mixed bag. Historically, when you would
Speaker 1: back up messages using iCloud, you were really getting only
Speaker 1: half the story. Messages were backed up based on the
Speaker 1: device that you were backing up to iCloud. If you
Speaker 1: did a restore, you would get your messages back, but
Speaker 1: only the messages that were on that device, and they
Speaker 1: were never truly synced across devices. This means that if
Speaker 1: you deleted a text on one device, it might still
Speaker 1: show up on another device. Now, with messages in iCloud,
Speaker 1: once you turn on the future, you can manage your
Speaker 1: messages kind of like you manage webmail. They'll be on
Speaker 1: all your devices. When you delete one place, it'll be
Speaker 1: gone from another place. If you send a response from
Speaker 1: one device, that response will be reflected on the other device. Now,
Speaker 1: before I explain how to turn it on, let me
Speaker 1: tell you some of the other benefits. One of the
Speaker 1: big ones is that since your messages are now stored
Speaker 1: in iCloud, this can save you storage space on your phone.
Speaker 1: So before all of your I messages were sort of
Speaker 1: in this giant backup, which included the photos and attachments
Speaker 1: and older messages that you had. All of that was
Speaker 1: in a giant messages backup. Well, now a lot of
Speaker 1: that is going to be offloaded to eye. Only a
Speaker 1: portion of your messages will actually be stored on your phone.
Speaker 1: The rest will all kind of be on demand. When
Speaker 1: you need something, you tap it and your iPhone will
Speaker 1: pull it off the cloud and deliver it to you instantly.
Speaker 1: That means your nightly backups will also be faster since
Speaker 1: you're not backing up a giant messages backup. It's just
Speaker 1: a backup of the local messages that are on your phone.
Speaker 1: I know that's kind of a small delineation, but it
Speaker 1: is there and it will impact your nightly backups. And finally,
Speaker 1: when you get a new device, it's all going to
Speaker 1: be restored with all of your messages, not just whatever
Speaker 1: you had lingering on the device that you're restored from.
Speaker 1: So basically, in a word, this is going to be
Speaker 1: really cool because finally you now keep track of all
Speaker 1: your texts, no matter where you send or receive them from,
Speaker 1: and they will all be in one nice, nicely organized backup.
Speaker 1: So how do you set it up? Well, first off,
Speaker 1: you need to have the latest version of iOS installed.
Speaker 1: This is iOS eleven point four, so go to your
Speaker 1: iPhone settings and download that. Once it's installed, you go
Speaker 1: into iCloud and all you have to do is turn
Speaker 1: on the toggle for messages and that will basically turn
Speaker 1: on messages back up in iCloud. If you don't have
Speaker 1: two factor authentication turned on, Apple's gonna ask you to
Speaker 1: turn that on before it will allow you to sync
Speaker 1: your messages and there's a reason for that. Messages often
Speaker 1: contain highly sensitive information. There's a lot of personal stuff
Speaker 1: in there. Apple wants to make sure that your account
Speaker 1: is as secure as possible before it goes mixing and
Speaker 1: sending your messages between all these accounts. But keep in
Speaker 1: mind they are encrypted end to end, so they are
Speaker 1: pretty secure. So what does it mean when you have
Speaker 1: two factor authentication turn on? Basically, every time you sign
Speaker 1: in using your Apple ID, whether it's on a new
Speaker 1: device or on the web, you're going to get a
Speaker 1: notification or a text message with a code. You have
Speaker 1: to enter that secondary code after your password in order
Speaker 1: for the login to proceed. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a hassle, but it is well worth the added layer
Speaker 1: of security. So I just turned the messages in iCloud
Speaker 1: on on my iPhone and I'm gonna turn it on
Speaker 1: on my iPad. But on my Mac computer the feature
Speaker 1: is not available just yet. You have to have a
Speaker 1: software update to ten point thirteen point five for your
Speaker 1: mac os. Right now, I'm running ten point thirteen point four,
Speaker 1: so I can't say that it works perfectly just yet.
Speaker 1: But I am very excited about all this because I
Speaker 1: never really understood in the past what was going on
Speaker 1: with my messages. Sometimes they'd arrived to my Mac, sometimes
Speaker 1: they'd derive to my phone, sometimes they'd be on both.
Speaker 1: I never really understood. And now finally everything will be
Speaker 1: in sync. Now there is one flip side to all
Speaker 1: of this, because you're storing all of your messages in
Speaker 1: the cloud, this will take up even more iCloud storage,
Speaker 1: So keep that in mind. If you're in that five
Speaker 1: gigabyte free tier, it's gonna be pretty tight in there
Speaker 1: between your photos and your messages, so you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: have to upgrade pay that extra buck a month like
Speaker 1: I do for fifty gigs. I think that's quite the deal.
Speaker 1: I also think the benefit of having all my messages
Speaker 1: SYNCD across all my device is a really awesome feature.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much for listening. If you like
Speaker 1: this podcast, please rate and review it in the Apple
Speaker 1: Podcast Step. I really appreciate that because then more people
Speaker 1: discover it. And if you want to see my step
Speaker 1: by step tutorial for turning on the new messages in
Speaker 1: iCloud feature, which by the way, again works with both
Speaker 1: your I messages and your text messages, just go to
Speaker 1: my website richon tech dot TV. Until next time, I'm
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.