iOS 11.4 and macOS 10.13.5 give us a feature Apple first showed off nearly a year ago: Messages in iCloud. The feature is easy to enable. Read on to learn how.
Messages in iCloud stores conversations along with the photos, GIFs, videos, and other attachments they contain in your iCloud account online to save space on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Any conversations you delete from one device automatically delete from your other devices—a handy feature if you get spam texts.
Here’s how to enable Messages in iCloud on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch:
- Launch Settings
- Tap your name at the top of the Settings list
- Tap iCloud
- Turn on Messages in the APPS USING ICLOUD list

To turn on Messages in iCloud on your Mac do this:
- Launch Messages
- Go to Messages > Preferences
- Select the Accounts tab
- Click the Enable Messages in iCloud checkbox

You can enable Messages on iCloud for your iOS devices now because iOS 11.4 is available. macOS 10.13.5, however, hasn’t been released yet. That’s likely coming very soon.
Jeff, if you’re offering how-to’s for a new version of the OS, you may want to mention if it hasn’t been released yet, up front. I just spent like a half hour trying to figure out why my MacBook Air wasn’t showing the update to 10.13.5, until I finally read the very end of your article. 🤨