![]() What you should be doing instead is augment those cloud-based backups with backups that have been locally created on and stored on your Mac or Windows computer. Or maybe that backup was the only place you could still find videos of your son’s first steps or photos of your beloved cat that passed away, but now it’s gone and you have to live with it! Don’t rely on iCloud backups alone! If you have stopped using that old backup of your iPhone 5s because you sold that rusty phone years ago, tough luck-it will get automatically deleted after 180 days and there’s nothing you can do about it! It’s almost as if Apple is purposely burying this information so that people don’t bother themselves with any of this. Doing so would go a long way toward letting people know what’s going to happen, giving them the necessary time to create a local backup of the device on their computer.Īnd good luck getting an email from Apple whenever an old backup is about to get deleted. No link to that support document is provided in your iCloud Backup settings either.Īnd when you turn off iCloud Backup in Settings, Apple doesn’t even put a warning to inform you that the device’s backups will be wiped clean from iCloud after 180 days. The feature’s description in Settings doesn’t mention any of this. No matter how you look at it, there’s no denying the fact that Apple has done a very poor job of communicating its data retention policy to customers who use the iCloud Backup feature.Īside from the aforementioned support document confirming that iCloud backups are deleted automatically after 180 days of not being used, users are basically left to figure this out on their own. PSA: Apple doesn’t warn you about deleting old backups Keep in mind that iCloud Backup is a per-device feature: turning on cloud-based backups on your iPhone won’t automatically enable them on your iPad and iPod touch. Your last backup will also get auto-deleted after 180 days if you “stop using iCloud Backup.”įor those wondering, you stop using the feature upon signing out of your iCloud account on that device. You can turn off the feature by going to Settings → → iCloud, then slide the iCloud Backup switch to the OFF position. This feature will even come to the rescue should your iPhone get lost, damaged beyond repair or stop working altogether.īut what exactly is Apple’s data retention policy regarding iCloud backups? Specifically-are these things stored, like, forever on servers until deleted manually? And if not, for how long does Apple keep old backups stored in iCloud after you’ve stopped using them? Why Apple deletes unused backups?Ī support document on the Apple website mentions in passing that the last device backup is stored for 180 days after turning the feature off. ![]() The device is backed up once per day when plugged into the wall, connected to a Wi-Fi network, the screen is locked and there is enough available space in iCloud for the backup.Īlso, setting up a new device from scratch offers an iCloud restore option which lets you continue from that particular backup point on your new device. When on, this will upload a copy of your information and data stored on the device to iCloud. ![]() 4) Don’t rely on iCloud backups alone! What is iCloud Backup and how does it work?Īpple offers a convenient feature for backing up your iPhone or iPad to iCloud.ĭubbed iCloud Backup, it can be turned on in Settings → → iCloud → Backup.
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