iCloud+ Storage

Upgrading to any paid iCloud+ tier unlocks iCloud Private Relay, which encrypts your browsing traffic to hide your IP address from networks and websites. You also get Hide My Email, allowing you to generate unique, random email addresses that forward to your personal inbox to prevent spam.

Apple offers several iCloud+ storage tiers, ranging from 50GB all the way up to 12TB, introduced in recent years to accommodate heavy 4K video and ProRAW photo backups. The 12TB plan is shared across Apple One and can be split among up to six family members using Family Sharing.

Unlike a standard VPN that routes all your traffic through a single secure server, iCloud Private Relay uses a dual-relay architecture where two separate entities handle your IP address and DNS records. This split design means no single party knows both who you are and what websites you are visiting, though it only works inside the Safari browser rather than system-wide.

Generally, Hide My Email requires a paid iCloud+ subscription, but Apple allows anyone with an Apple ID to use it for free specifically when signing up for an account via the "Sign in with Apple" feature. If you want to generate random emails on the fly directly within Safari or your Mail settings for any website, you must upgrade to an iCloud+ tier.