Yes, you should be backing up your iPhone every day. Here’s how
Despite the wealth of critical personal data our iPhones hold, many people don’t back up their devices regularly. Usually, this is because the amount of data they’d need to back up in iCloud would vastly exceed their available iCloud storage space—and they don’t want to pay extra each month for an iCloud Plus subscription. Other times, people assume their iPhone data doesn’t change that much day…
Your iPhone stores a vast array of personal data, but many people overlook the importance of regularly backing up their devices. This often stems from the concern that backing up to iCloud would consume too much of their available storage, or they believe their iPhone data doesn't change significantly from day to day. However, failing to back up your iPhone can result in significant loss of data should it ever be damaged, lost, or stolen.
That's why it's advisable to back up your iPhone daily. Apple offers an automatic backup feature called iCloud backup, which creates a copy of your important data and securely stores it in the cloud each night. Once this backup is uploaded, if you ever need to replace your iPhone due to loss or theft, you can easily restore all your data to your new device. Your old iPhone may be unusable, but your personalized data remains intact.
To enable automatic iCloud backups on your iPhone, navigate to Settings, tap your Apple Account name, then iCloud. From there, select iCloud Backup and toggle the switch to ON. If automatic backups aren't your preferred method, you can manually back up your iPhone at any time. To do this, go to Settings, tap your Apple Account name, tap iCloud, then iCloud Backup. Finally, tap "Back Up Now".
For an alternative backup method, you can store a copy of your iPhone's backup locally on your Mac or PC. This approach is arguably more secure, as the backup isn't stored online and isn't vulnerable to cloud-based attacks. However, a local backup is limited by the space available on your computer's hard drive. To back up your iPhone locally on a Mac, plug your iPhone into your Mac, click the Finder icon, select your iPhone from the sidebar, and under General Backups, choose "Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac".
You can optionally encrypt the backup for added security. The same process applies to backing up your iPhone on a PC using iTunes. While many suggest using both iCloud and local backups for redundancy, it's crucial to remember any password used for encryption, as recovery without it is impossible.
Written by urgent.news from Fast Company's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
