The problem with keeping it in iCloud is how do you get it all out of iCloud? Say onto Linux, or into another cloud like Dropbox or Google Drive?

You can dump them all via the iCloud.com website if you so desire, the iCloud software on Windows can do the same.

Alternately use Google photos w/ google drive subscription.

Which they removed a few months ago.

They just removed photos showing in drive, you still get unlimited photos/videos in original quality with a drive sub.

You can't sync your photos into drive, which is how I backed them up, using the `drive` commandline tool and then `s3cmd` to make another copy.

Sync to local storage, drag and drop, sync happens to other cloud.

Have a Mac running set to sync all iCloud content locally. From there you can manually access all media or automate sync/backup to some other service.

I noticed that recently and am wondering if I would be fine with the lowest storage option in the future. I have 128GB and have never gone above 60GB. I am sitting on 20GB's of local music that hasn't been touched since I switched to streaming music two years ago.

I "downgraded" from a 256GB iPhone X to a 64GB iPhone XS with iCloud subscription. The initial sync to iCloud Photos will take a few days, but after that one can consider the iCloud library to be the source of truth.

The iPhone XS is currently at 55.3GB filled, and I have over 400 apps installed.

128 GB is the sweet spot. I imagine there is a very large glob of users in the 50-75 GB range, which is right there on the border of "64 GB will give you problems".

Getting the Pro model, the next step up is 256 - which is super eye-rolling. The 128 GB model on the regular 11 is perfect.

The one thing that bothers me is the 2TB max on iCloud storage... I'm not close to hitting it, I think I've used 250 GB, but I'm also not that far away either with all these super HD iPhone features. I wonder if they will add a new plan at some point.