How to Stop Downloading Messages from iCloud on iPhone

iCloud, a built-in service in every Apple device, keeps your photos, files, as well as messages safe, up to date, and available wherever you are. However, it sometimes may not work as perfectly as you expected. And you may wonder how to stop downloading messages from iCloud.

How to stop downloading messages from iCloud

Here is what you may need to know about messages in iCloud and how to get downloading messages from iCloud off.

How does Messages in iCloud work?

In conclusion, Messages in iCloud enables you to treat your Messages as you would treat photos. Once you turn it on, Messages sync across all devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID and keep up to date with all your messages no matter what Apple devices you’re using.

Correspondingly, if you delete a message, attachment, or conversation on one of your devices, it will be deleted from your all Apple devices. If you don’t want to keep your conversations up to date across all your devices, you can follow the steps in the next part to turn it off.

How to turn off downloading messages from iCloud

If you wonder how to stop downloading or syncing messages from iCloud on iPhone, you can just turn off the Messages feature in iCloud on your iPhone.

On your iPhone/iPad that you want to stop downloading messages from iCloud, go to Settings > Tap on [your name] at the top of the screen > Tap iCloud > Scroll down to locate Messages, toggle off the switch beside it to turn it off.

Please note that once you disable Messages in iCloud, all your message history will not be synced anymore. To keep your important message safe, you may still need to backup messages without iCloud.

Bonus: How to selectively backup iPhone messages without iCloud

iCloud syncs all messages on your iDevices. Actually, you can choose a professional iOS data backup tool to help you selectively backup data on different iDevices independently. It is highly recommended you FoneTool.

Why you choose FoneTool:
✓ Selective backup service. With the help of FoneTool, you can preview and choose the wanted messages to backup to your computer. Besides, you can backup any photos, music, videos, contacts as you like from iPhone to computer at the same time.
✓ 3-step backup. With a few simple clicks, you can finish backing up using FoneTool. It provides you with a superfast backup speed.
✓ Unlimited backup space. Since the backup files are saved in local folders on your computer, USB, NAS, etc., there is almost no need to worry if they run out of storage space. 
✓ Free to restore to other iOS devices. You’re free to restore the backup any time you need to any iOS device because FoneTool supports iPhones (from iPhone 4 to the latest iPhone 15 series), iPad (including iPad 2022), and types of iPod.

Now click the icon below to download FoneTool to your computer, then follow the three steps below to backup your desired messages to computer.

Step 1. Launch FoneTool
Connect your iPhone to computer using a stable USB cable. When you receive a prompt on iPhone, tap Trust to let your computer access iPhone. Then, launch FoneTool and click Phone Backup > Choose Selective Backup and click Get Started.

Step 2. Choose Backup files
From this page, check the Messages icon to browse all messages on your iPhone. You can click each conversation to preview and choose the wanted conversations or single messages you’d like to backup to computer. If necessary, click any other types of data to backup at the same time. Then, click OK to confirm.

Step 3. Start to backup
Choose a storage path to save the backup. As mentioned, besides local folders on computer, you can also choose to backup iPhone to USB flash drive. Finally, click Start Backup to begin the task.

When it is finished, you can locate the backup on the Backup History page. You’re free to browse the backup files. You can also choose to restore certain backup files from here. FoneTool serves you with an incremental backup solution. Therefore, you won’t backup or restore any duplicates with it.

If you want to transfer messages from iPhone to iPhone without backup, the powerful transfer functions in FoneTool can be a nice choice for you. And you won’t get frustrated about how to stop downloading all messages from iCloud on iPhone.

FoneTool also offers you functions to manage iCloud data. You can freely browse iCloud files, upload, download, and delete iCloud files with the assist of FoneTool.

Conclusion

That’s all for how to stop downloading messages from iCloud. You just need to turn the Messages in iCloud to stop it from syncing among all your Apple devices.

Since some messages on your iPhone contain important information, it’s suggested to backup specific messages to computer using FoneTool. If this guide helps you, please share it with others.