Backing up your phone prevents this data from being permanently lost.īacking up your iPhone is simple, and there are three methods you can use to backup your device. If you lose or break an iPhone without a backup, you can also lose your photos, contacts and message history. If you store important data on your iPhone, then you need to keep a backup of your data. You can use a backup to safeguard your data in the event that you lose or break your iPhone. Updated June 2022: These are still the proper steps to back up your iCloud Photo Library.A backup is a direct copy of all of the important data on your iPhone (read more: What is stored in an iPhone or iCloud backup?). Remember, you can never have too many backups, and again, it's much better to be safe than sorry. It's pretty easy, and we always recommend keeping everything backed up on an external hard drive, as well as an off-site service as well. When it comes to backing up iCloud photos, these are the best solutions possible. Always back it up, and then back it up again!
In general, this is why I tend to recommend backing up your full library to your Mac or storing a library on an external drive. If you don't store your iCloud images locally, this is a bit trickier: you can use the external drive method we mentioned above to export portions of your library to an external drive, and then sync that drive to your preferred online backup service, but it's a bit more labor-intensive. If not, consider it a good time to start! If you don't store your iCloud Photo Library on your Mac Good news: If you already use a service to back up your hard drive and you've already synced your full iCloud Photo Library to your Mac, it's easy to back it all up there too. If you store your entire iCloud Photo Library on your Mac After all, you can never have too many backups, in all honesty.
How to make an online backup of your iCloud Photo LibraryĮven though your entire iCloud Photo Library is (as the name implies) stored online in iCloud, it's worth considering a second online backup as one of your redundancies. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.īack up portions of your iCloud Photo Library by showing: Click Export (Image credit: iMore).
If you've turned on the Download Originals option for your Photos library but don't want to back it up automatically, you can always copy your Photos library to an external drive regularly. now's a good time to start! Back up your Photos library manually
And if you don't currently use a backup service, well. No matter which method you prefer (though it's highly recommended to use both), your Photos library (and all images and video automatically downloaded from iCloud) will be backed up as well. If you've turned on the Download Originals option for your Photos library, you can back up your Photos library as part of your regular backup routine with Time Machine or even an online clone service like Carbon Copy or BackBlaze. (You can also export sections of your library if you don't want to back up the whole thing.) Back up your Photos library automatically There are two ways to back up your iCloud Photo Library to an external drive: backing up your Photos library automatically or manually. How to back up your iCloud Photo Library content to an external drive
Depending on how big your iCloud Photo Library is, it may take a while - just be patient. Your Mac will now download full-resolution copies of all your images to your Mac's hard drive, stored inside your Photos app library. Back up iCloud Photo Library to Mac HD by showing: Click iCloud, click Download Originals to this Mac (Image credit: iMore)