6 iCloud+ Features You're Already Paying For But Never Use

My Medium friends can read this over on Medium.

You pay Apple every month. Probably. Even if it's just $0.99 for iCloud storage. I pay much more. 2 TB + family plans.

It’s worth it for me. I run Apple everything. The phone, the watch, the MacBook, the iCloud subscription. I'm a heavy iCloud user, all in on the ecosystem. And happy with it for now.

Still, a lot of what that subscription includes sits in Settings, switched off.

The moment you pay Apple anything for storage, you're not on iCloud anymore. You're on iCloud+. Most people don’t even realize that. And every paid tier, from the $0.99 plan up to 12 TB at $59.99, gets the same set of extra features (mostly). What you buy going up is space. And the number of security cameras. More on that later.

The free 5 GB tier gets none of it. It’s way too little in 2026. That’s another story, though.

Back to the features you probably never (really) use.

1. Hide My Email

Okay, I hope you’re using this one, actually. But since many don’t even use Apple mail at all, rather Gmail or Outlook or whatever, there’s a good chance you’ve never seen it in action.

Hide My Email creates random addresses that forward to your real inbox.

A website wants your email for a download? A free trial you don't fully trust? Hand over a random address. If it starts spamming you or shows up in a breach, delete it. Your real address stays out of it. I like that a lot. And use it everywhere!

Your real email address is the master key to everything else you have online. Every time you hand it out, it can be sold or leaked. That's the reason this feature exists.

You can reply from the random addresses too. Everything lands in the Mail app.

Two places to find it. In Safari, tap an email field and iOS offers Hide My Email. Or Settings, your name, iCloud, Hide My Email, where you can create, label, and delete addresses.

Now the bad news. There was a flaw. If someone sent a message to one of your hidden addresses and it got rejected as spam, your real address showed up in the bounce logs. Reported to Apple in June 2025. Apple said it was fixed in March 2026. It wasn't. The patch came on July 3, after 404 Media wrote about it. Addresses created before July 7, 2026 may still sit in some third-party log. There's a class action now.

Not a good look.

One more thing from this month. Apple wanted to move Hide My Email addresses to a new domain, private.icloud.com. People pushed back, because a separate domain makes the aliases trivial to block. On August 24, Apple reversed. They stay on icloud.com.

2. Custom Email Domain

It gets a bit more technical with this one.

If you own a domain, iCloud+ can run your email on it. Instead of name@icloud.com you get name@yourdomain.com, and Apple handles the sending, the receiving, and the mailbox. In the Mail app that's already on your phone.

Up to five domains, three addresses per domain, shareable with up to five other people or your family group.

I covered the limits in There Is No Apple Workspace. It's a nicer inbox for yourself, not business email. No admin console, no group aliases. For one person, a family, or a side project, it's plenty.

For many of us, that's the Google Workspace fee gone. If you'd rather keep your mail in Europe, Infomaniak* does the same job for a few euros a month.

Setup is the one item on this list with some work. You need a domain from a registrar, then iCloud.com or the iCloud settings on your iPhone walk you through the DNS records. Depending on the registrar it's a few copy-pasted entries. A one-time job.

Also, why doesn’t Apple just enter the business space properly with an Apple Workspace? The pieces are all there...

3. Private Relay

Private Relay is the closest thing Apple has to a VPN. Apple would never call it that. And it isn’t that, exactly.

But it’s cool.

When you browse in Safari, it hides your IP address and encrypts your DNS requests. Your traffic goes through two relays. The first one is run by Apple. It knows your IP but not where you're going. The second one is run by a third party, hands you a temporary IP, and loads the page. Neither side has the full picture. That separation is the whole idea.

It isn’t unbreakable. But it’s better than nothing.

A standalone VPN costs a few dollars a month. This one is in the plan you already pay for. For Safari, at least. Chrome and other apps don't get it as far as I know.

Turn it on: Settings, your name, iCloud, Private Relay.

Now the small print. Some websites ask for an extra verification step because they can't see your real IP. And in August, security researchers found that passkey logins bypass Private Relay entirely. The request is handled by the operating system, not by Safari, so it never enters the relay. Any site that supports passkeys, or pretends to, can see your real IP. Apple says a fix is planned for fall 2026.

Not great. Again, better than nothing for everyday browsing.

4. HomeKit Secure Video

I don’t use this one. I am not on team smart home. Other than a HomePod.

If you are, security cameras want a subscription for cloud storage. HomeKit Secure Video stores the clips in your iCloud instead. End-to-end encrypted, so not even Apple can look inside your house.

And the clips don't count against your storage. Up to ten days of recordings, then they roll over.

The camera count depends on the tier. One camera on 50 GB, five on 200 GB, no limit from 2 TB up. That's the only feature that scales with the plan.

You need a compatible camera and a home hub, so a HomePod or an Apple TV. Not every camera works. Check for "HomeKit Secure Video" on the box. Plain "HomeKit" isn't enough.

5. Apple Invites

It’s boring for some, for others it’s a pretty cool addition to the ecosystem of iCloud+.

Invites is a separate app, so not inside iCloud+ settings. What it does: event invitations, RSVPs, a shared album, a shared playlist.

Anyone can attend, with or without an Apple Account. But hosting an event needs iCloud+. If you have it, there's no limit on events and no ads.

6. iCloud.com

This one is free. But still...

Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Mail, Drive, all of them run in a browser at icloud.com. The full apps (mostly). Sign in with your Apple Account, on any computer. Yes, Windows, Linux.

Lost your iPhone? Find Devices works on icloud.com from someone else's laptop. Use a private window, sign in, done.

It’s not as smooth in some places as I’d like but it works.

Downsides

Money. iCloud+ at 2 TB is $9.99 a month. $120 a year. It’s okay, in my book, compared to other companies' plans. But it is still a chunk of money. Especially for young people who get into the ecosystem.

What I like: These features are a bonus on top of storage you'd pay for anyway, not a reason to buy a bigger plan. Nothing changes between $0.99 and $59.99 except space and cameras.

What I don’t like: the two leaks above. Private Relay is not a VPN, and this summer it wasn't even a full Safari shield. Hide My Email took Apple a year to patch. Two in one summer, from a company that puts privacy on billboards.

And there's more paywall coming. Tim Cook said on the July earnings call that heavy AI users will get "upgrade possibilities on iCloud+" to "buy up the stack". Already, on iOS 27, the Apple Intelligence features in the Home app need a 2 TB plan. It looks like iCloud+ is turning from a storage bill into Apple's services bill. We'll see what that costs in September.

The Bottom Line

Four of these switch on the moment you pay Apple anything. Many of us pay and never use those features properly.

If you only turn on one, make it Hide My Email. Takes a minute. Feels good.

We pay for the storage. The rest comes with it. Might as well use it. Right?

If you're not already, follow me on Medium.