Hello,
I am trying to help my girlfriend backup her iPhone and Macbook.
I am a bit unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem, and she’s still not very familiar with the technical aspects of it.
With my android and PC, it seems a bit more straightforward. Certain programs or services will backup everything, and I can restore it all exactly as it was at that time.
But the Apple webpage for iCloud Backup lists a bunch of things it backs up, meaning, it doesn’t backup everything?
I’m trying to figure out the best way to make backups of her phone and laptop so she can restore them exactly as they were when each backup was made.
Do iPhones and Macs have this type of option? Backing up everything, like taking an image of them at that point, including all apps, all files, all settings, every little thing, and then using that to restore them at a later date if needed?
Thank you for taking the time to read my post.
Any direction or guidance you might be able to provide is greatly appreciated.
I’ll update with any solutions or options for your opinions if I’m able to find any.
If you have the iCloud storage available, you can do iCloud backups. It will backup all the data from the phone, but not the apps themselves. (Those apps will auto-install after a restore, though.)
As for the Macbook, the usual way is an external USB drive and TimeMachine (which should be preinstalled). You can also take a complete backup of the iPhone using macOS’s Finder (the phone should popup there as a “drive” once connected via cable) and then backup everything to a HDD/SSD via TimeMachine.
iCloud. It can backup everything or not, you have the choice.
As mentioned, iCloud does this for the phone. Apple makes this very easy, it has the advantage of basically always running so you never have to remember anything, but it’s also yet another subscription unless you can somehow squeeze into the free 5 gigabyte plan.
You also have the old-school option of backing up the phone to a Mac. This used to be iTunes, but now the music bits of iTunes are the Music app, and the “manage your iPhone/iPod” bits, including device backup, live in the Finder. If you plug the iPhone into the Mac, it should show up there with all sorts of syncing options including backup. I would advise also encrypting that backup with a password, not so much for security but at least in the past, an unencrypted backup didn’t include some sensitive data like health but an encrypted one did, so even setting it up with password “password” was useful.
Unfortunately, the back up to a Mac option isn’t automatic. With some finagling, you can set it up to connect wirelessly, so it’ll appear to be plugged in when they’re on the same WiFi, but you still have to initiate the backup on the Mac.
For both phone backup options, you’ll get the important bits backed up but not quite everything. The backup won’t include the apps themselves, for example, when you restore it’ll just get them from the App Store again. Apps also have some control of how they get backed up, so you may find that upon restoring, some apps are more of a fresh start than others, you might have to log in again, etc. For the most part, this all works pretty well though.
For backing up the Mac itself, as a Real Computer you have a few more options. Apple doesn’t offer Mac iCloud backup, but they do have Time Machine for backing up to an external drive or a network drive. There are also services like Backblaze that offer cloud backup for Macs. And there’s the classic “just save your important files to a second place” option too.
Couple questions: Does she “buy” music and/or movies and manually add those to her phone via something like iTunes? If no, then we don’t have to worry about extra things to backup manually. If yes, there’s more steps involved.
Go to Settings (it’s a grey app with that name, you may need to search for it by pulling down from the Home Screen starting with your finger in the middle of the phone), and look at the top of Settings. Does it show her name and icon at the top?
If Settings shows her name at the top, tap where it says her name. Scroll down a bit and find where it says her name and “This device”. Like mine would Kaitco’s iPhone and just below that it would say “This iPhone 15 Pro”.
Tap that option. At the top, it should show things like Find My iPhone, iCloud Backup, and AppleCare & Warranty. iCloud Backup should be listed as On. Tap on iCloud Backup, and make sure that “Back Up this iPhone” and “Back Up Over Cellular” are both green and checked on.
Then, tap on Back Up Now to ensure the latest backup is complete. Just below this setting, it should show the last backup date and time or Never if the phone had never been backed up.
If when you go into Settings, it does not show her name at the top, there are a lot more steps to take to get her Apple Account associated with the phone and so forth, so let me know.
Off topic but I kinda want to know for future reference how you would
Back up everything, like taking an image of them at that point, including all apps, all files, all settings, every little thing, and then using that to restore them at a later date if needed?
On Android. I have tried so many things but found none.
