How Do I know if I have a Backup of my iPhone/iPad/iTouch?

I frequently look through Twitter for tweets about iOS data loss -- you know, tweets like "I hate my iPhone because all of my photos just randomly got deleted!" Usually the first step in trying to help these tweeters recover their data is to figure out if they have a backup of their iPhone or iPad.

I don't even know that there were iPhone backups -- I doubt I have one!

Don't be too sure! Apple is sneaky good like that sometimes. If you plug in your iPhone/iPad to sync music or photos, occasionally iTunes makes a backup during the syncing process (it was probably that time that you thought to yourself "Ugh why is this taking so long?!") Alternatively, if you have iCloud backups on, your phone is making backups to iCloud occasionally when you plug into a power source.

How to see if you have an iTunes backup


Important side note: If your phone just wiped data, DO NOT plug it into your computer again yet. You don't want to accidentally make a new backup with your data erased. iTunes & iCloud overwrite backups to save space.

There are a few ways to check to see if you have a backup of your iPhone or iPad on your computer made with iTunes.

Option 1) Download our free trial of Decipher Backup Browser. It will scan your iTunes backup folder and show all of the (unencrypted) backups, the date they were created, and give you a preview of some of the data in it.

Option 2) Open iTunes, and open the Preferences from the menu. In the "Devices" tab, it will show a list of all of the devices iTunes knows about and the date of their last backup. I like option 1 better since Backup Browser will show you all of the backups in that folder with a little more info (and well, because I wrote Backup Browser. I guess I'm biased.)

How to see if you have an iCloud backup

Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, and in the first menu, tap "iCloud". Scroll to the very bottom of the iCloud screen and you should see "Storage & Backup" -- click that. If iCloud backup is "on", then you'll see information about the date/time of the last backup. Don't hit "backup now" if you're trying to recover data... you don't want to overwrite your backup!

Great! I have a backup. What do I do with it?

That depends on what you lost and how you want it back.

• If you lost everything, or are using an iCloud backup, then it's time to consider restoring from the backup. If you restore from that backup you will lose everything on your phone now and it will be replaced with the contents from the backup. It's like a time-warp for your phone, bringing it back to the state it was in when the backup was made.
• Sidenote: If you restore from a backup and apps are missing, don't despair. If you reinstall the app from the app store (you will not be charged again), the data from that app is still on your iPhone/iPad, and will be there waiting for you when you use the app.

• If you don't want to restore from the backup, and you have an iTunes backup (what I call a "local" backup on your computer, vs an iCloud backup), then you can use our software, Decipher Backup Browser to dig out the information you need. If there's something you lost but isn't listed in Backup Browser, you should shoot us an email or post a comment -- we love suggestions of new features we can add. (I should also note that if you're looking for text messages or voicemails, there's Decipher TextMessage or Decipher VoiceMail for that :))