How to Recover Photos From A Disabled/Locked/Unavailable iPhone Without Backup

Last Updated on April 19, 2023 by Jack Robertson

Apple will disable your iPhone when someone has entered the wrong passcodes over 10 times and there’re always accidents like.

Your child is trying to unlock your iPhone to play some games or do some scrolling on TikTok;
Your sibling or your “stupid” friend is messing around and entering wrong passcodes into your iPhone.

Either of them will activate the “iPhone is disabled, connect to iTunes” screen on your iPhone, leaving you no other choice, but to reset your iPhone to make it function again.

If you’ve made a backup before, surely, doing a reset is not a thing. But if you haven’t made a backup before or the latest photos on this iPhone haven't been backed up yet, well, that can be serious as you may never see them again.

Recovering Pictures from A Disabled iPhone without Backup:

Tip: Can you Recover Photos from A Disabled iPhone without Backup
Method 1: Get Photos Off A Disabled iPhone without Backup via echoshare
Method 2: Recover Photos from A Disabled iPhone via iCloud.com
Method 3: Recover Photos from A Disabled iPhone via iTunes
Method 4: Recover Photos from A Disabled iPhone via iCloud Auto Back

Can You Recover Photos from A Disabled iPhone without Backup

You better not follow the on-screen “iPhone is disabled, connect to iPhone” sign if you don’t want to lose your data. You should check the methods below to recover your data first before it’s too late.

And yes, we can do that - recover your photos from a disabled iPhone without backup. No matter if your iPhone is locked, disabled, water-damaged, screen-broken, or system-bugged, there’re always solutions to get your data off the iPhone.

Method 1: Get Pictures off A Disabled iPhone without backup via echoshare

To get photos off your disabled iPhone, we can try a iPhone photo extractor. This kind of app can detect the data on the iPhone and as a user, you can select and extract the exact item you want to avoid redundant data. Most importantly, you don’t need any backup, you just need a phone and a trusted computer.

In the market, there’re many options. It will take you quite a while to make a choice and to end your scrolling, let me introduce the leading program of the industry to you, the echoshare iPhone Data Recovery.

This is a pretty handy iPhone photo extractor. With it, you can easily get the photos off your disabled iPhone without any skills. It offers a simple interface and buttons that you will know how to use after launching it.

Moreover, it’s also a backup extractor program as well. So, if you have any important photos stored in iTunes or iCloud backup, use this program and extract them out to avoid a factory reset.

To recover your photos from the disabled iPhone, let’s check the steps below.

Step 1: Download echoshare iPhone Data Recovery on your PC, launch it.

Recover with Win NOW Recover with Mac NOW Recover with Win NOW Recover with Mac NOW

Step 2: Choose iOS Data Recovery and Recover from iOS Device.

Connect iOS Device to Computer via USB Cable

Step 3: Connect your disabled iPhone to the PC with a USB cable.

Step 4: Click Start Scan to find the deleted photos on your disabled iPhone.

Once the scan is completed, click on Camera Roll, Photo Stream, Photo Library, and App Photo separately, all the photos on the disabled iPhone will be displayed under the 4 sections.

Select the photos you want to recover, you may choose to recover some other data as well, such as text messages, contacts, chatting history of some social media apps, etc.

Finish selecting the photos, click Recover, echoshare will prompt you to choose a folder to store the photos or you can use the default one. Click OK to proceed.

After the process is complete, you will have your iPhone photos recovered to your computer!

Method 2: Recover Photos from A Disabled iPhone without Backup via iCloud.com

You may say “I’ve never turned on the iCloud backup on my iPhone, iCloud is not going to help me with this”.

You need to know that iCloud is not just Apple’s backup service, but also an “auto-sync” tool. Once you sign in your Apple ID to this iPhone, iCloud is enabled and so is its auto-sync feature.

What data will be synced to the iCloud? A lot, like photos, emails, contacts, notes, etc.

So, yes, you can recover your photos from the disabled iPhone without backup. But, how do you access the iCloud synced data? Try iCloud.com.

Tip:

If you have the iCloud app on your computer, that’s even better, simply launch that app and you can find your photos there.

Step 1

Open a browser on your computer or another trusted device, visit iCloud.com, and log in with your account and password.

Step 2

On iCloud.com, choose Photos from the listed icons. There, you can preview all the photos that are currently stored on your disabled iPhone.

You can select the photos you want to recover, and download them locally, or you can share them through email.

Move Video Photos from iPhone to PC via iCloud.com

Method 3: Get Photos out from a Disabled iPhone via iTunes

Is it impossible to connect your disabled iPhone to iTunes?

Not really. If you've synced your iPhone to iTunes before via a USB cable or Wifi connection, then, there're chances that iTunes will still recognise your disabled iPhone. In this happens, then, you can easily get your photos out from the disabled iPhone to a PC via iTunes.

Tip:

For Mac users, you may apply to Finder when you've synced your iPhone to the Mac computer before. Finder will sync to your iPhone too.

Step 1

Use a USB accessory and connect your device to the PC, iTunes will recognize your iPhone and launch automatically.

Or if you've enabled wireless sync for iTunes and your iPhone, just connect both the PC and the iPhone to the same Wifi network. iTunes will sync too.

Step 2

On Devices, click the icon of your disabled iPhone, and get into Summary.

Step 3

On the interface, go to Backups. Then, tick This Computer, iTunes will back up your data on your PC. Click Back Up Now, iTunes will start to save your data on this iPhone. Just wait for a while.

After the backup, you can simply click the Restore iPhone button to fix your disabled iPhone.

Step 4

When the process is done, restart the iPhone to activate it. During the process, you can choose to restore data from a PC/Mac.

Method 4 Recover photos from a disabled iPhone via Photo Stream

Apple released a feature named Photo Stream a couple years ago. This feature will be like an auto-sync feature, once it’s enabled on your iPhone, all the photos you save and shoot will be uploaded to all the other devices that have the same Apple account registered.

That means if you have an iPhone and another iDevice like iPad, whenever you take a photo on your iPhone, you will soon see the same image on the iPad.

So, having a disabled iPhone is nothing as you can recover the photos from another device. But all these require you to have at least two Apple devices and turn on the Photo Stream option on the disabled iPhone.

Don’t know if you have it on or not? Easy, go to your iPad or iMac, check your Photos app. If you can’t see any new photos, try the above three methods.

Conclusion

Having a disabled iPhone is indeed a bad news to anyone who is facing it. Still, we need to try everything we can to get the data out from the device, especially the precious photos. Luckily, there're so many methods we can try. Simply follow the methods above one by one to get your photos out from the disabled iPhone. You can surely have your photos recovered from it.

By the way, when all photos are recovered, remember to fix your disabled iPhone via Recovery mode and iTunes. So you can continue to use this iPhone and have fun with it.

FAQ

1How do I get my old photos from iCloud to my iPhone?

Step 1: Download an iCloud photo extractor on your computer, launch it after that.
Step 2: Connect your iPhone to the computer.
Step 3: On the interface of the program, click the Recover from iCloud Backup tab. Enter with your Apple ID and passwordv to log in.
Step 4: Choose the iCloud backup file you want, click Download.
Step 5: Locate Photos, there, you can find several options: App Photos, Camera Rolls, Screenshots.
Step 6: Click on each and browse, choose the old photos you want to transfer to your iPhone. Click Recover to complete.

2How long does an iPhone stay disabled?

It depends on the times that you’ve entered wrong passcode on the iPhone.

Let’s say if you’ve entered wrong passcode for 6 times, your iPhone will be disabled for 1 minutes. And: