Take Control of iCloud, 9th Edition

Back Up and Restore iPhone/iPad Data

iCloud can automatically back up most of the important data from your iPhone or iPad to Apple’s servers. This feature is usually invisible once you’ve set it up, but there are a few options you may want to adjust, and you’ll want to know how to Restore an iPhone or iPad from a Backup should the need arise.

Note: As I mentioned in the sidebar iCloud Drive and Backups, iCloud is not designed to back up data from Macs. For that, you should use a local option (such as Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner) or a cloud service such as Backblaze. For more details, see my book Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac.

Understand How iCloud Backup Works

Backups are as important on an iPhone or iPad as on your computer—after ...