[2 Ways]How to Back up your iPhone Data to Mac
Last Updated on April 18, 2023 by Joanna LakeThe iPhone stored a lot of precious data such as messages, photos and videos. To protect those data, it’s essential to regularly back up your iPhone, since with an intact iPhone backup, you can keep your data safe from wrong deletion and get rid of that data loss from an accident like the iPhone is broken or lost.
You have quite a lot of options to back up your iPhone, you can back up iPhone to iCloud, or backup iPhone to computer.
If you’re a Mac user, you can directly back up the iPhone to Mac. After doing research and trying many tools, we have concluded the things you need to know about backing up iPhone to Mac.
Keep going with us, then you’ll be able to smoothly back up data from iPhone to Mac.
Solution 1. How to Back up iPhone to Mac with iTunes/Finder App
The official way to back up iPhone is using iTunes/Finder app, which is a data manager that will be able to back up and restore the iPhone.
How to Back up iPhone to Mac with iTunes App on macOS Mojave or An Earlier Version
iTunes is only available on macOS Mojave or an earlier version, so if you’re unable to find the iTunes on your Mac, check your macOS version first.
Step 1: Download and install the latest iTunes on your mac, and open the program.
Step 2: Link your iPhone to the Mac with a lightning cable. Then a message will pop up on your phone to ask you whether to trust this computer or not, tap Trust and enter the password of your iPhone.
Step 3: Open iTunes, click the device icon on the menu bar, then you will find the details about your iPhone. Choose the Back Up Now button on the interface. (If you want to back up more data, then you should tick Encrypt iPhone backup in advance.)
Step 4: After the whole process is completed, you can find your latest backup information on the interface and the backup will be stored in a folder of your PC.
How to Back up iPhone to Mac with Finder on macOS Catalina, macOS Big Sur, macOS Monterey
Step 1: Make sure the macOS on your Mac is the latest version.
Step 2: Connect your iPhone and Mac with an official cable, remember to trust this computer on your iPhone.
Step 3: Open Finder, you’ll see your iPhone on the left sidebar, select it. Then choose Back Up Now to back up your iPhone. After a few minutes, the backup file will be stored on the Mac.
Note: Want to back up some privacy data (such as WiFi settings, passwords, call log and website history)? You need to tick Encrypt local backup before starting back up.
Tip: Not sure which Macos version is installed? Find out which macOS your Mac is using.
While its backup feature will be quite basic, you can only back up the whole data on your iPhone or restore all data on that back up to your device.
What if some users want to only backup photos or messages? iOS Data Backup & Restore will help you out.
Solution 2. How to Back up iPhone to Mac with iOS Data Backup & Restore
Want to selectively back up or restore your iPhone? FoneLab iOS Data Backup & Restore is what you need.
iOS Data Backup & Restore is a more advanced tool that allows you to select the category of iPhone data before starting back up the iPhone to Mac.
Moreover, you can view the detailed data on backup files, and choose to restore some data when it is necessary (recover disappeared notes, for example)
What’s more, the operation is pretty simple, so you can easily complete it with the following steps.
Steps to Back up iPhone to Mac with iOS Data Backup & Restore:
Step 1: Download the iOS Data Backup & Restore on your computer.
Step 2: Connect your iPhone to your Mac with a cable. When you see a window prompt on your iPhone, which is asking you whether to trust this computer, touch Trust.
Step 3: Open the program, and it will detect your iPhone right away. Select iOS Data Backup & Restore.
Step 4: Select the iOS Data Backup button.
Step 5: Then choose Standard backup or Encrypted backup if you want to use a password to protect the backup data. Click the Start button.
Step 6: You can choose which files you want to back up from the following interface. Select the Next button.
Step 7: Choose the location of the backup and then click Backup. After a while, your iPhone backup will exist.
There is a team to keep improving this software. If you have any questions while using the program, feel free to ask for help.
Can I Back Up My iPhone to Mac with an External Hard Drive Like Time Machine or Time Capsule Directly？
Yes, you can. iOS Data Backup & Restore allows users to choose the destination of the backup file:
Open the Mac FoneLab, move your mouse to the menu bar and select Mac FoneLab ⟶ Preference. Then a pop-up window shows, change the backup file location to an external hard drive that is connected to your Mac.
However, iTunes and Finder will only be able to store your backup file in the Macintosh HD disk. If you want to move the backup file to an external hard drive, then you will need to open the folder where the backup file is located and transfer the backup file to an external hard drive.
When you carry the external hard drive, you can recover iPhone data from a backup file anytime, even if your Mac isn’t on your side.
With two solutions above, you are all set to back up your iPhone to Mac. After that, you are worry-free about the iPhone data loss issue, since you can easily recover data from backup files to your device.
FAQ
Actually, the speed of backing up your iPhone is related to the size of your iPhone data. So, it will be longer if this is the first time to back up your iPhone.
For sure, you can choose to back up some important data on your iPhone with iOS Data Backup&Restore, which will definitely reduce the backup time.
On macOS Mojave or earlier: Open iTunes and select your device. Go to the menu bar, and select iTunes ⟶ Preferences ⟶ Devices. Then you will find all the backups on your Mac. Select one and click the Delete Backup, you will successfully delete the backup file.
On macOS Catalina or later : Open Finder and click your device on the left sidebar, then select Manage Backups. When you see a window, choose a backup and click the Delete Backup button to delete the backup file.
Generally, there are two methods to backing up the iPhone: backing up the iPhone with desktop or backing up with iCloud. For sure, the latter is the most convenient one, it will back up itself while charging and connecting to WiFi.
However, the backup will take up the iCloud storage which is only 5 GB for free. Moreover, backing up or restoring an iPhone from iCloud seems paused could be troublesome.
In a word, backup iPhone to Mac will be a more stable and economical option. Now we will introduce 2 solutions to back up your iPhone to Mac.
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