Open Settings on a recent iPhone and there is a reasonable chance the first thing you see is not a setting. It is an offer: more iCloud+ storage, a free trial of Apple Music or Apple TV, or an AppleCare+ plan for the phone you are already holding. Apple is advertising to you inside the app you opened to change the brightness.
What people are actually seeing
The prompts appear as banners near the top of the Settings list, above or just below the Apple Account card — the most valuable strip of screen real estate in the operating system, and the one every user passes through. The complaint spreading across forums and social media this week is not that the banners exist, but that dismissing them frequently does not stick. Users report tapping the close control, leaving Settings, coming back, and finding the same offer waiting. Others say a banner they dismissed returned after an iOS update, or after the trial it was advertising expired.
The comparison being made over and over is to Microsoft, which spent years putting suggested apps and Office prompts into the Windows Start menu and was pilloried for it. The point people are making is that Apple sells itself, and prices itself, as the company that does not do this.
Why Apple is doing it anyway
The answer is on the balance sheet. Hardware sales are broadly flat — people keep phones for four or five years now — while services, which means iCloud, Music, TV+, Arcade, AppleCare and the App Store's cut, is the division that keeps growing. Every one of those products is sold to somebody who already owns an iPhone. The cheapest place to reach that person is inside the phone, and the highest-traffic screen on the phone is Settings.
There is a second argument Apple would make: a user whose iCloud backup is failing because the free 5GB is full does need to know. That is true, and it is also exactly the framing that makes the banners hard to switch off — they are classified internally as account notices rather than advertising.
What you can actually turn off
- Open Settings → Notifications, scroll to App Store, and turn off Announcements and promotional alerts.
- Go to Settings → Apple Account → Media & Purchases (or Subscriptions) and turn off marketing communications where offered.
- Open Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising and switch off Personalised Ads. This does not remove the banners, but it stops Apple targeting what you see in the App Store, News and Stocks using your own activity.
- In Settings → App Store, turn off Personalised Recommendations.
None of that removes the iCloud storage prompt, because Apple does not offer a switch for it. The honest answer is that the only way to make that particular banner go away is to buy the storage.
What it means in Bangladesh
An iPhone in Bangladesh is bought at a price most of the world does not pay — import duty, VAT and the grey market push the effective cost well above the US sticker, and a large share of handsets here are second-hand or brought in by a relative. A user who has spent that kind of money is being shown a banner asking for another 200 taka a month, in a currency where that recurring charge is a real decision rather than a rounding error.
There is a practical wrinkle too. Apple's paid tiers bill through international cards, which most Bangladeshi users do not hold, so a large number of people here are shown an upsell they could not complete even if they wanted to — and are shown it repeatedly. If your iCloud backup is failing, the alternative that costs nothing is to back up to a computer over cable, and to turn off iCloud Photos for the folders that are filling the 5GB in the first place.
