I originally shared this in the MPU forum but thought it may be useful to share here too.
I have a Family Share iCloud plan - the 200GB level.
I have a family of 4 and my son and my wife have taken up ~125GB of that storage and we are basically maxed out. So they both need to go into their apps - mostly Photos and Messages it appears after initial reviews - and remove useless content/photos/videos.
My question is are there any automations out there that could help with this process of bulk removal of useless photos/screenshots/etc?
I know Photos has a feature that categorizes different images accordingly - like Screenshots - which is a big culprit for my wife - but was wondering if anyone knows of any other automations or apps worth considering that may help with the process of editing/removing useless images in bulk and make the process a little less time consuming?
And no, I really don’t want to upgrade to the 2TB iCloud plan.
Shortcuts has all sorts of ways that could help your family members list and filter photos and files as well as ways to offload (save to another storage area), archive (e.g. compress using ZIP), or delete.
The hard part is simply for you to decide what the criteria is.
If there is a Mac synced for them, then tools like Daisy Disk will help identify the quickest wins, and opens up other options for automating removals.
You could also consider adding time triggered automations for Shortcuts that tell people if/whenthey have reached some thresholds on file numbers, numbers of screenshots, or maybe even storage volumes, etc.
Oh, I like this one below. Didn’t even think of that!
I’ve found some Shortcuts like daily review of photos taken, yet still looking for other/better options.
The thing I immediately need to help my wife and kids with is going through what they currently have in our shared iCloud account and purge useless stuff to get the total down from ~190GB of 200GB. After that, I then need to set up regular reminders/routines so they are prompted to purge things that are not worth retaining over time. There is just no need for that much stuff in their accounts.
