How to i backup my iphone to icloud

Backing up your phone is essential to keep your photos, videos, and even your text messages safe. Our phones go everywhere with us, but just like our keys, they can get lost. Luckily losing your data along with your phone is avoidable. 

There are two easy ways to back up your iPhone: a cloud service, like iCloud or OneDrive, or your computer. Both methods have their pros and cons. The easier one may be backing up to a cloud service because it only requires one device: your phone. Backing up to the cloud, unfortunately, limits you to how much data you can store with that cloud. 

Using a computer to back up your phone won't cost you a monthly iCloud membership, but your data is stored on a hard drive, which means it's only safe while the computer is safe. 

Here's how to back up your iPhone with iCloud

Step 1: Go to settings and tap on your name at the top

This option gives you access to your Apple ID, iCloud, and Purchases settings. 

Step 2: Tap on iCloud

Step 3: Go to iCloud Backup

Step 4: Enable iCloud Backup and select Back up Now

Tap on the toggle to enable iCloud backups, and Back Up Now will appear, select that, and your phone should start backing up to iCloud.

5GB is not enough for a lot of us, especially if you've never backed up your iPhone. But you can choose what gets backed up to reduce the amount of data to upload to iCloud or buy more storage. If you're still over the limit and don't want to pay for a membership, then you can back up to a computer.

Here's how to back up your iPhone on a Mac

Step 1: Connect your iPhone to the computer

Step 2: Open Finder to find your iPhone in Locations

Gone are the days when iTunes was the go-to to get data out of your iPhone. Open Finder to view your iPhone in Locations, and there will be a snapshot of the current storage information, current iOS and any updates, and backup options.

Step 3: Select Back up to this Mac and click on Back Up Now

Be sure to select Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac before clicking on Back Up Now.

Creating a backup could take a few minutes or a couple of hours, depending on how much data you have to back up. Mine took a little over an hour, but I hadn't backed up my iPhone in over a year. 

Apple offers iCloud services to automatically back up your iPhone. 

Here are the different plans iCloud offers for its customers:

• Free iCloud: 5GB 
• iCloud+: 50GB of storage $0.99
• iCloud+: 200GB of storage $2.99
• iCloud+: 2TB of storage $9.99

Both options have their pros and cons, but I personally prefer a cloud service backup. I like having my photos and videos easily accessible through an app on my phone without occupying storage space. This beats having to get into a computer to find an old photo every time I want one. 

Your purchased apps don't need to be backed up; that information is associated with your Apple ID, so they can be easily downloaded when you want them again. 

More how-tos

Related

• You can back up your iPhone with iCloud, but you can only save a limited amount of data for free.
• If you have a PC, you can back up your iPhone with iTunes; if you have a Mac, you can use Finder.
• Once you've saved a backup to your computer, you can also move it onto an external hard drive.

When was the last time you backed up your iPhone? Hopefully it wasn't too long ago — otherwise, you're one accident away from losing a lot of your data.

Experts recommend keeping all of your data backed up, and updating those backups often. And luckily, there are several ways to back up an iPhone and keep your data safe.

Here are the three best ways to back up your iPhone. 

How to back up your iPhone with iCloud

Backing up with iCloud is incredibly convenient. You can do it wirelessly over Wi-Fi, and even set it up so your iPhone backs up automatically, meaning you never have to worry.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap your name at the top of the screen.

2. In the Apple ID menu, tap iCloud and then iCloud Backup.

3. Make sure that iCloud Backup is toggled on. This makes it so whenever your iPhone is charging and connected to Wi-Fi, but you're not using it, it'll back up your data. So plug your phone in at night before bed and your files should back up regularly.

You can also tap Back Up Now to manually create a backup right now.

What to do if you run out of iCloud storage

When you sign up for an Apple ID, you only get 5 GB of free space. If you have multiple Apple devices backed up to iCloud — or even one reasonably full iPhone — that space runs out quickly.

The good news is that iCloud storage is cheap and easy to upgrade. Here's what you can get:

• 50 GB: $0.99 per month
• 200 GB: $2.99 per month 
• 2 TB: $9.99 per month

How to back up your iPhone to Mac or PC 

If you prefer to keep your data outside of the cloud, you can save it all to your computer. It'll all get stored into a single file that you can move and store however you like.

If you've got a PC, you'll do this using iTunes (so make sure you have it downloaded). If you've got a Mac, you'll use the Finder. But either way, the steps are similar.

1. Open iTunes or Finder on your computer, and then plug in your iPhone with its charging cable. On your iPhone, it'll ask you if you want to trust the computer — select Trust and enter your passcode.

2. In iTunes or Finder, select your iPhone. It'll appear as a tiny iPhone icon in the top-left in iTunes, and you'll see its name in the left sidebar in Finder.

3. Under Backups, choose to back up your data to the computer, then click Back Up Now.

Give your devices a few minutes to back up your data. Once it's all done, you can disconnect your iPhone.

Where to find your iPhone backups

For the majority of users, the steps above will more than suffice.

But if you're interested in keeping device backups on an external hard drive, or simply want the flexibility to move your backups to a different spot on your computer, you'll have to dig a little deeper.

On a Mac:

Click the Spotlight search button or press Command + Shift + G with a Finder window open and copy in the following text: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/.

That will take you to the folder where your backups are stored.

Alternatively, connect your iPhone to the Mac again and open its menu, then click Manage Backups. You'll get a list of all your backups, which you can then right-click and select Show in Finder to locate.

On a Windows PC: 

You'll use a similar process for Windows. Open your Search bar and type in: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\.

Substitute your user profile name for (username). This will take you to the folder with your backups.

Alternatively, open iTunes and click Edit at the top, then Preferences. In the pop-up that opens, click Devices. You'll see all your backups. You can delete your backups from this menu too.

Copy and move backups to an external hard drive

Now that you've found where your backups are hidden away, you can copy them to an external drive and delete the ones on your hard drive.

Apple advises users to copy the entire folder if you want to preserve the data without any chance of it becoming corrupted, so go ahead and make a copy of the folder (or compress it into a ZIP file) and drag that over to your external hard drive (or a different cloud service like Google Drive).

Now you can delete the copy on your computer to save space, if you like. But it never hurts to have multiple copies.

Christopher Curley contributed to a previous version of this article.

William Antonelli

Tech Reporter for Insider Reviews

William Antonelli (he/she/they) is a writer, editor, and organizer based in New York City. As a founding member of the Reference team, he helped grow Tech Reference (now part of Insider Reviews) from humble beginnings into a juggernaut that attracts over 20 million visits a month. Outside of Insider, his writing has appeared in publications like Polygon, The Outline, Kotaku, and more. He's also a go-to source for tech analysis on channels like Newsy, Cheddar, and NewsNation. You can find him on Twitter @DubsRewatcher, or reach him by email at .

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