If you have an iPhone, especially the latter, you probably use it to take a lot of photos and videos. The cameras on the iPhone are exceptional and much more convenient to pop out than a giant DSLR! Well, at least for me.
And if you’ve read anything on the internet, you’ve probably heard of Wired writer Mata Honan, who was jailbroken and his iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro were completely erased by hackers and he lost all of his precious photos and videos of his daughter. because he didn’t. don’t make a backup.
After reading this article, I quickly realized that if someone erase my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro, I will lose a lot of very important data. I make regular backups with Time Machine and iCloud backup is enabled on my iPhone and iPad, but since my data is fragmented all over the place, I will still lose a lot of things.
This made me go through all my photos and videos and settings on my devices and make sure that all current data was copied externally and any new videos and photos taken on my iPhone would be copied automatically. In this article, I will tell you what I have done to properly back up all of my iPhone / iPad / MacBook data, including photos and videos.
Method 1 – iTunes / iCloud
The easiest way to back up everything is using iCloud or iTunes. Open iTunes, connect your device, right-click it and select “Backup”:
This will manually back up your device to iTunes on your local computer. Note that if you have iCloud backup enabled, you can still back up your device locally using this method. I also highly recommend making a backup to iTunes, as I tried to restore an iCloud backup before, but it didn’t work. iCloud is great, but it’s a cloud, and sometimes the cloud can be finicky.
Also, remember to encrypt the backup when performing a local backup, as this will allow you to back up other protected data as well.
To turn on iCloud Backup, go to Settings on your device, tap your name, then tap iCloud, and then tap iCloud Backup at the bottom.
Turn it on and then let the device back up on its own, or you can manually back up to iCloud if you don’t want to wait. Make sure your device is connected to power and Wi-Fi before starting the backup.
The only thing about backing up your devices this way is that if you, for example, delete one video and want to restore it, you need to perform a full device restore. Now it’s great if your device is completely cleaned up, and then you can restore all the data from the backup, and you will have all your photos and videos, as well as everything else.
However, it is best to also enable iCloud Photo Library (Method 2 below), which is much more convenient for managing photos and videos. Note that you should also leave iCloud Backup enabled.
Method 2 – iCloud Photo Library
If you mainly shoot photos and videos exclusively from your Apple devices, then using iCloud Photo Library is well worth it. By default, Apple is very stingy and only gives you 5GB of free iCloud storage. This isn’t enough if you’re using an iPhone as your primary camera.
Fortunately, iCloud isn’t that expensive. For $ 1 a month, you get 50 GB of storage, and for $ 3 a month, you get 200 GB of storage. After that, it just goes up to 2 TB for $ 10 a month, which is a whopping amount of space.
To enable iCloud Photo Library, go to Settings, click on your name, click on iCloud, and then click on Photos.
Turn it on and be sure to check the “Optimize iPhone storage” box if your device doesn’t have enough space to store all of this media.
Any device signed in with your iCloud ID can now see all videos and images. This is great if you have a Mac where you can also use the Photos app along with the iCloud Photo Library.
The third method – apply photos
As mentioned, the Photos app is a great tool for managing your library if you already have a Mac. The Photos app comes in handy for people who still want to capture higher quality photos and videos with a dedicated camera, but want to be able to view all of this in their iCloud Photo Library.
You can set it up so that whenever you connect your device to your Mac, it will automatically import all your photos and videos. Once imported, you can choose whether to keep them on your device or delete them. If iCloud Photo Library is turned on, all imported media will be downloaded and visible on all your devices.
To enable iCloud Photo Library on Mac, click Photos in the menu bar and then click Preferences.
Your Mac has the same options as the iPhone: Load Originals or Optimize Mac Storage. If you have a large hard drive and can put your entire iCloud Photo Library on your local hard drive, I recommend choosing Download Originals to This Mac. If something goes wrong with iCloud, you have a full backup of everything on your local device.
The only thing I don’t like about the Photos app is that everything is stored in Apple’s proprietary format and is not available to other apps. I used to love using Google Picasa, but it hasn’t been updated in years.
Method 4 – Google Photos / Cloud Storage
The last method I use the most is backing up to Google Photos. You can download Google Photos apps for iPhone and iPad and your photos and videos will be downloaded automatically. I personally use both Google Photos and iCloud to create two copies of all my photos and videos. It may seem like overkill, but I’m too paranoid.
In Google Photos, click on the three horizontal lines and then on the gear icon. Click on “Backup & Sync” and turn it on. Then it will start syncing everything in your iCloud Photo Library to Google Photos. If you already have a large amount of media in your photo library, Google Photos will sync your entire library.
The big problem is that this will force your device to re-download all content from iCloud so that it can upload to Google Photos. This means that your device will run out of space for a while until the download completes.
This is definitely inconvenient, especially the first time, but has proven to be very helpful to me many times. I shot a video, and on the same day my iPhone-loving daughter deleted them! That’s why I make backups in multiple locations just in case.
Another important reason I back up to Google Photos is because it is associated with Google Drive With Google Drive, you can sync your entire photo library with another computer, or even a network device like a NAS. ICloud also has a Windows program to sync everything to your computer, but I’m not a huge fan of how it works.
Besides Google Photos, you can actually use any cloud service you want. Dropbox, OneDrive, and other cloud services work the same way, so if you’re already connected to the service, keep using it. What method do you use to back up photos and videos from iPhone / iPad? Let us know in the comments. Enjoy!
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