iCloud alternative for the UK without Advanced Data Protection

If you want to keep your iCloud data completely private and secure, but you live in the United Kingdom — where Apple is rolling back Advanced Data Protection to comply with government demands — you’ll need an alternative to iCloud sync and backup features.

That’s because the only option is to not use iCloud. There’s no getting around it: without Advanced Data Protection, your iCloud backups can potentially be snooped on.

Turning off iCloud will have many negative ramifications. iCloud manages syncing services across all your devices. If you own an iPhone, Mac and/or iPad, iCloud makes sure all your messages, photos, app data, notes, passwords, bookmarks, etc., appear everywhere.

Without Advanced Data Protection, there are still a few of these backup services that are end-to-end encrypted. But a few critical services, like device backups, are not — and if you don’t disable them, you’ll have a big hole in your data security. Keep reading or watch our video.

iCloud alternative: Backups without Advanced Data Protection

If you use iCloud, your data is in stored in two places: a copy on your phone, and a copy on Apple’s servers (the “cloud”). Your information is always encrypted in transit between the two. When your data is on iCloud, both your Apple Account password and a key that Apple stores can unlock your data to access it. Governments frequently request Apple for parts of user data, and Apple is legally compelled to unlock it and hand it over.

Advanced Data Protection is a feature that puts you in control of the extra decryption key. This means that Apple literally cannot access your data, even if it’s on their own servers.

There are three exceptions — some data stored in iCloud is always fully protected: messages, passwords and health data are fully end-to-end encrypted.

However, a portion of your recent messages are included in your device backups, so those aren’t entirely safe unless you disable iCloud backups. And, of course, your photo library, browser history, contacts, notes and more are all very revealing data. I’ll walk you through how to keep your data secure.

Table of contents: Alternative solutions to iCloud without Advanced Data Protection

1. Remove Advanced Data Protection
2. Turn off iCloud Photos
3. Alternative to iCloud Photos: Sync to your computer
4. Alternative to iCloud backup: Backup your other data
5. Turn off and delete iCloud backups
6. Delete your photo library
7. Turn off iCloud sync for all your other apps and data
8. Remove files from iCloud Drive
9. Switch from iCloud Mail to a secure email service
10. Other secure services for email, photos, calendar, more
11. Get prepared in other parts of the world

Remove Advanced Data Protection

First, you’ll need to turn off Advanced Data Protection. In Settings, tap on your name at the top, then tap iCloud > Advanced Data Protection and tap Turn Off Advanced Data Protection.

If you don’t disable it, then eventually, all iCloud features will be inoperable. If you’d still like your messages, passwords and health data to sync across devices, you’ll need to turn it off. Don’t worry — in the instructions that follow, we’ll remove all your valuable data from iCloud so that you have nothing left behind, even with Advanced Data Protection turned off.

Turn off iCloud Photos

You should disable syncing your photo library to iCloud, but you can continue to use the Photos app on your devices offline. First we’ll disable syncing to iCloud, then I’ll show you how to sync your devices manually.

On your iPhone, iPad or Vision Pro, open Settings, tap on your name, tap iCloud > Photos, and turn off Sync this Device at the top. When prompted, tap Download Photos & Videos.

If you don’t have enough free space on your iPhone to hold your library on-device, you may want to store them on your Mac, instead.

On a Mac, open the Photos app, go to Photos > Settings in the menu bar, and click the iCloud tab. Make sure Download Originals to this Mac is checked, then disable iCloud Photos.

If you don’t have enough free storage on your Mac to keep your entire library, you can check out our buying guide for external SSD storage. You can move your photo library to an external disk using the Finder. In the Finder menu bar, click Go > Home, click the Pictures folder, then copy your Photo Library to your external storage device. Double click the Photo Library on your external drive to open it, and in the pop-up menu, click Switch.

Alternative to iCloud Photos: Sync to your computer

If you’re not syncing your photos over iCloud, you’ll have to sync them up to your Mac or PC. Plug your phone into your computer to get started.

On a Mac, open Photos. With your phone plugged in, you should see it appear in the sidebar in the “Devices” section. Select it, then click Import All New Items to sync your photos. Alternatively, if you just want to store your photos on your file system, you can use Image Capture.

On a PC, open Photos. (Microsoft’s unrelated app on Windows 10 has the same name.) Click Import, then select your iPhone and import all your latest shots.

Alternative to iCloud backup: Backup your devices

If you’re not backing up to iCloud, you’ll have to regularly back your phone up to your Mac or PC. Plug your phone into your computer to get started.

On a Mac, open the Finder then click on your device in the sidebar. Select Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac, enable Encrypt local backup and give it a password if you want to be extra-secure, then click Back Up Now. You can click Manage Backups… and delete an old one if you no longer need it.

On a PC, download the Apple Devices app from the Windows store. With your phone plugged in, click Backup Now.

Turn off and delete iCloud backups

With your phone backed up to your computer, you can now delete your iCloud backup on your phone. Open Settings, tap on your name at the top, tap iCloud > iCloud Backup.

At the bottom where it lists your device backups, tap on each one, then tap Turn Off and Delete from iCloud. Confirm by tapping Turn Off and Delete.

On the previous page, if Back Up This iPhone isn’t disabled, make sure to do so. For good measure, double-check this setting is disabled on all the devices.

Delete your photo library

To be sure you’re deleting your photo library from iCloud and not from any of your personal devices, you should sign into icloud.com.

Launch Photos from the landing screen. Click to select one photo, then hit ⌘A (or Control-A on a PC) to select everything. Click Delete. Your entire photo library will be moved to Recently Deleted.

But don’t permanently erase them yet. I recommend you wait a day or two, double and triple check that you still have your photos on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, everywhere you want your photo library. If your library disappears on any of these devices, then they’re still syncing to iCloud. Go back and make sure you’re following the earlier steps correctly.

Photos in Recently Deleted will be deleted automatically after 30 days, but you can permanently and instantly delete them as well. Click Delete All.

Turn off iCloud sync for all your other apps and data

In Settings, tap on your name, then tap iCloud. Under “Saved to iCloud,” tap See All. (It’s very close to the “Drive” button, make sure you tap the right one.)

Go through the list and disable iCloud sync for the many apps and services that use it. When you download a new app, you’ll have to disable it here as well.

iCloud still encrypts Messages, Health and Passwords and Keychain, so you don’t have to worry about disabling those — so long as you follow the prior directions to disable iCloud backups.

Remove files from iCloud Drive

If you have any files saved in iCloud Drive, you should probably download them to a computer and delete them.

On a Mac, open the Finder, then in the menu bar, click Go > iCloud Drive (⇧⌘I). Select everything with ⌘A then in the menu bar, go to Edit > Copy. Go to a different folder on your Mac, like Documents, and hit Edit > Paste. After your Mac copies it all, go back and delete the contents of iCloud Drive.

On a PC, you can sign into icloud.com and launch iCloud Drive from the web browser. Go to the Browse tab in the sidebar. You can select a group of files to download at once by holding down the Shift key, and hit Download to download them all. Although unfortunately, you can’t download an entire folder at once. Downloading everything may be a little tedious.

You can do this from your iPhone or iPad, too. Open Files > Browse > iCloud Drive. Tap the More (⋯) button in the top, tap Select and tap Select All. Then tap the More button in the bottom right and tap Copy Items. Tap Done in the upper right. Go back to the Browse tab and tap On My iPhone. Scroll down to the bottom. Tap and hold on the line of text that says X items, then tap Paste. Go back to iCloud Drive, select all, then tap Delete in the bottom toolbar.

Switch from iCloud Mail to a secure email service

If you use iCloud Mail, you should definitely switch to a different email provider. Your email is one of the most personally revealing data stores, and unfortunately, it is not encrypted.

On a Mac, you can easily export your mail history. Right-click a mailbox in the sidebar, then in the menu bar, click Mailbox > Export Mailbox. Pick a folder and click Choose to export it. When you switch to a different mail provider, you may be able to import your mailbox.

Alternative to iCloud: Other secure services for email, photos, calendar, more

• Instead of Apple Mail, Calendar, Reminder and iCloud Drive, I can personally recommend Proton Mail. The free tier is somewhat limiting, but it’s enough to dip your toes in and see if you like it. The paid tier is $9.99/month for 500 GB of storage — that’s a lot of emails. It also adds a full VPN you can use to protect all your internet traffic.
• Instead of iCloud Photos, you can use Ente. It supports many of the same features: albums, face tagging and even family sharing. It’s end-to-end encrypted and open source. Its paid plans are slightly more expensive than iCloud, at 200 GB for $4.99/month, but you can start with 5 GB for free. It runs on all major platforms.
• If you really want cloud syncing notes back, you can try out Standard Notes. It’s fully encrypted and many of its features are free, so you can try it out at no cost.

Get prepared in other parts of the world

Although this particular law only applies to the United Kingdom, you’re not entirely in the clear elsewhere. The UK has just demonstrated to every other government how to pass a law allowing the police to spy on its citizens, and Apple has shown how it will comply. If you live in the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan — pay attention and prepare yourself to make the same move.