So I know what iCloud does backup: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428 But I couldn't find any source on what it **doesn't** backup I accidentally bricked my phone and loaded my backup onto another phone (it's been a while), but I did notice a few things (I'll continue adding things to these lists as I use my phone, in case anybody wonders the same thing): Things that did not backup/move over to new phone: ----- 1) There was **no** call history, that **didn't** get backed up 2) Apps that were no longer available in the app store did not get backed up 3) Apps that I had developed and deployed to my phone were not backed up (icons still there, though) Things that did backup/move over (somewhat surprisingly): ----- 1) Apps that saved session tokens still persisted (was still logged in to a lot of apps) 2) Probably for the same reason the session tokens were backedup, my downloaded Spotify songs also came along 3) I would've guessed that only iMessages would've been backed up, but looks like all of my SMS texts to android friends also got backed up which is nice 4) It did backup my iOS settings, I had sleeping screen turned off, and it was brought over Main reason I'm asking is because I wasn't sure if I should go through the effort of trying to revive the phone to get any obscure data off of it. In an ideal world I would get an exact copy. I'm OK just throwing it out otherwise Not sure if anybody's ever kept track, if there's a resource somewhere out there that has a list, that would be great closure for me. Thanks!

I have iPhone 11 with latest OS 18.6 (as of today). now I have some voice memos on my iPhone, and I want to move them to my Windows 11, so I did the following but it did not work:- 1) Download and Install iTunes inside windows 11 2) Connect my iPhone to my laptop using USB cable. 3) Open iTunes, click on the phone icon >> under music, I select to Sync, so it says that it is performing 4 steps, then iTunes mentioned that it is waiting for changing. and nothing got moved to my laptop. I tried to create new test memos, and those did not get moved as well. So, what about this is not workable? and can i benefit from the "Phone Link" app inside windows 11?

On my iPad pro with iPadOS version 18.6 I want to back up data to iCloud for 2 or 3 apps without including several GB of pictures and operating system files. How do I do this?

I had a dozen or so windows with some tabs open in Finder for a long time. Today I find out it's randomly lost them all. Is there a way to restore the open windows/tabs using a Time Machine backup? Thanks! EDIT: I tried restoring "com.apple.finder.plist" from /Users/[User]/Library/Preferences but it doesn't work. I don't think the system is letting me do this properly while Finder is running. Is there a way to keep it killed while I swap the file? Or how could I do this from recovery? Does this file even store the open folders?

I have an APFS-formatted drive with a year or so of Time Machine backup from my old machine. I now got a new Mac. When setting it up, I did not migrate any system files or users, instead copying user files manually for a fresh start. So in Time Machine's eyes it's a brand-new machine. Now I should, of course, be able to inherit/associate the old backups to the new machine (as plenty of threads on this site discuss). I was wondering, though, when told to inherit, will Time Machine deduplicate its data, i.e., automatically detect files that are the same and only use new space for those that have changed, or will it create an entirely new copy of all data? Because if the latter is true, then what's the point of inheriting? I could just create a new APFS volume to back up my new Mac and leave the other volume untouched. In other words, will I save any space on the backup drive if I inherit the old Time Machine backups? Or are there any other possible benefits?

I have a backup of my old iphone stored in icloud, and I would like to get just the photos from it without restoring the entire backup to my new phone, is there any way to do this? The old phone cannot be used as it is dead, and the photos in question are not saved in iCloud photos. I have tried the solutions from https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/297039/accessing-photos-on-iphone-icloud-backup , but they are deprecated and no longer work.

I have a 2 TB external SSD backup drive using Time Machine with my iMac. It worked great for 6 years, doing regular backups of my iMac hard drive. Suddenly it has stopped doing backups, and, in fact, the disk is now "read only". I cannot even delete folders or any files from the external drive. I noticed that 1.83 TB are used on the drive, with just 166.03 GB "available". I would like to not lose the files that I have backed up over these years, if possible. Is there any way that I can delete folders from this problematic external drive so that more space is available, possibly allowing me to access everything on the drive? Or is it necessary to erase everything on the drive and start over?

The deal is my Apple MacBook Pro (2020, M1, 13 inch) with 1TB of storage is running low on space. Most of the space used is photos and videos. So I thought the simplest way to free stuff on the local hard drive would be to put it all on an external drive; I have a few 1TBs laying around. I know the first thing to do, BTW, is a good Time Machine backup. :-) But that said, I wanted to check if there is a relatively simple way to move all the photos - basically the whole photo library - onto an external drive, and when I run phtoos it can run it from there. I know I could get a bunch of iCloud storage and use that too, but I want to have a local backup, and also be able to run Photos without worrying too much about whether my connection is working. I don't mind taping it to the lid or something :-) By the way I am not a sophisticated user of Photos, I haven't used as far as I know any of the advanced file features and honestly never really got fluent with it. I'm just saving photos on the app as I download them from my phone. I am sure there is probably something simple. It's just not a feature/capability I have used yet. I thought to just drag the folder from the one with my username. But I am never sure if the file pathways and links will keep working, sometimes these things get messed up if you aren't careful. This question was almost answered here https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/193035/how-to-backup-export-photos-videos-from-the-new-photos-app-to-an-external-hard-d But the person asking wanted to know about making it Windows-readable, and I am not sure a) that the procedure would be the same, if it is, then no worries b) if it is applicable to OS Big Sur - again if it is, I will try it

I use a Synology NAS to backup my family's MacBooks. Two are still working fine, but one of them was unable to make a backup for about a week. Because the other two MacBooks are still fine I am pretty sure that the issue is not related to the recent MacOS update nor to the recent Synology firmware update. The log file has repeating sections like the following:

2021-11-05 10:29:52: TMPowerState: 2
2021-11-05 10:30:22: TMPowerState: 2
2021-11-05 10:30:22: Not prioritizing backups with priority errors. lockState=0
2021-11-05 10:30:22: Starting automatic backup
2021-11-05 10:30:22: Attempting to mount 'smb://[USERNAME]@Synology._smb._tcp.local./time-machine'
2021-11-05 10:30:26: Mounted 'smb://[USERNAME]@Synology._smb._tcp.local./time-machine' at '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine' (111,02 GB of 805,31 GB available)
2021-11-05 10:30:26: Initial network volume parameters for 'time-machine' {disablePrimaryReconnect: 0, disableSecondaryReconnect: 0, reconnectTimeOut: 60, QoS: 0x0, attributes: 0x1C}
2021-11-05 10:30:26: Configured network volume parameters for 'time-machine' {disablePrimaryReconnect: 0, disableSecondaryReconnect: 0, reconnectTimeOut: 30, QoS: 0x20, attributes: 0x1C}
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Failed to delete 'file:///Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine/DCC98B45-7855-4FAA-B130-5FC56A017ED3.purgeable.sparsebundle/', error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4 "“DCC98B45-7855-4FAA-B130-5FC56A017ED3.purgeable.sparsebundle” couldn’t be removed." UserInfo={NSUserStringVariant=(
Remove :     Remove
), NSFilePa: "No such file or directory"}}
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Invalid mountpoint '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine' - no volume mounted at this path
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', Disk Management error: {
Action =:     Action = Unmount;
Target =:     Target = "file:///Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine/";
} : }
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', error: Error Domain=com.apple.diskmanagement Code=0 "No error" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=No error, NSLocalizedDescription=Kein Fehler.}
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Waiting 60 seconds and trying again.
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Cancelling backup because volume '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine' was unmounted.
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Requested backup cancellation or termination
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Backup cancelled (22: BACKUP_CANCELED)
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', Disk Management error: {
Action =:     Action = Unmount;
Target =:     Target = "file:///Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine/";
} : }
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', error: Error Domain=com.apple.diskmanagement Code=0 "No error" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=No error, NSLocalizedDescription=Kein Fehler.}
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Cleared pending cancellation request

Interesting detail: The folder that failed to unmount (/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine in this example) is always different on each try. And it is always created at the time the backup attempt started. And it always contains only one empty folder called time-machine:

-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B  5 Nov 10:30 3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66

What I tried so far: * Run hard disk tests on the Synology NAS (all HDDs are fine) * Disabled and enabled Time Machine * Run Disk Utility – First Aid on all disks * Manually deleted all existing folders in /Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./ * Told Time Machine to remove the existing backup and start from scratch * Rebooted the Mac a couple of times None of that made a difference. Any idea how to fix this issue?

I have a large iCloud photo library of about 30,000 irreplaceable images and videos. It is entirely hosted on icloud - I am using the 'optimise iphone storage' setting and have no high res images stored locally on my laptop as the library is too large. I'm getting concerned that iCloud is the only place I have the full resolution images stored and I want to download a backup of the entire library to an external HDD (preferred), or a second cloud service (less preferable) to ensure I have a second copy. I am happy keeping my main library on icloud as it works well for me and allows me to sync all my different devices (iphone, macbook, 2x ipads), I'm just looking to make a second **backup** copy in case something goes wrong. I don't need to use or access these photos under normal circumstance. I can't work out how to do this. The only options I seem to be able to find is to either download 1000 images at a time from iCloud to my external HDD (which is near impossible as I can't work out how to select 1000 at once), or download the entire library to my laptop, then backup from there - which I don't have space for on my laptop (photos library is 250GB, laptop entire SSD is 250GB). I'm not especially concerned about preserving file structure or anything like that, I just want to make sure I have all the images in case anything ever goes wrong with iCloud. What is the most sensible option? I'll pay for 3rd party software if that's the only option, though happy to put in some legwork to do it manually if there is a sensible way to do it. I don't mind manually adding future pics to the backup.

I've recently come across an issue with my external HDD (2TB, LaCiE) drive which is formatted with APFS. I have three volumes under a 2TB container which are all APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted). 1. When plugging in the drive, I see the following error for each of my volumes: 2. When trying to recover with Disk Drill, which has worked in the past, I only see "Updating disk list..." 3. When usig libfsapfs 's fsapfsinfo, tool, I see the following error:

fsapfsinfo 20210424

Apple File System (APFS) information:

File system hierarchy:
Unable to print file system hierarchy.
libfsapfs_internal_volume_unlock: invalid volume - missing key bag.
libfsapfs_volume_unlock: unable to unlock volume.
info_handle_get_volume_by_index: unable to unlock volume.
info_handle_file_system_hierarchy_fprint: unable to retrieve volume: 0.

Any and all help would be appreciated! Thanks :~)

I'm trying to find a way to create Time Machine backups that I can still browse in the future from machines that are not the one that created the backup (or from other users). My main issue it seems is with permissions, but I couldn't find any good guidance online valid for the way TM works since the switch to APFS. I recently got a new mac and noticed that backups created on my old MacBook are not accessible (red icon indicating lack of permissions). My old MacBook was running Ventura (still an intel machine from 2017). The external drive is APFS formatted. How can I make sure when creating backups on an APFS TM volume that I can browse them in the future. *A few details for context:* I did not use Migration Assistant to transfer the information over from the Time Machine volume to my new MacBook. Every once in a while I like to start fresh and use the move to a new machine as a welcome opportunity to do a spring-cleaning, reviewing all my settings and data, manually recreate settings, discard stuff that I don't use anymore etc. That also means moving my files first to in a separate "Transferred" folder and then step by step integrating them back into Documents, Pictures, Music, etc. So that's what I did this time. I set up my new MacBook without any migrating. But when it came to accessing the files from the backup I noticed that since I'm on a new machine, new user, I don't have permissions for those files. And because it's the new APFS TM volume, which is read-only for normal humans, I can't change permissions either. The workaround I did was to use Migration Assistant to create a new user on my new machine, then move all files I wanted from that user to the "Shared" folder, from there move them to the new main user that I had already set up, and then delete the migrated user (there's unfortunately no way to use Migration Assistant for only moving files, it always forces you to copy the library folder over). Now I'm hoping to either create backups in such a way that I can access them from any machine/user or find an easy way of accessing them a posteriori. The use case is not necessarily migrating to a new machine (there are workarounds like the one described above), but rather the opportunity to occasionally browse past disks, whether to retrieve an old file, or just for nostalgic purposes, how did I organize my files 10 years ago?, what programs did I use?, what was I working on?, etc. I still have old backups from 2008 (all contained in sparsebundles) that I occasionally access. I always encrypt my external hard drives with a password, so in terms of data safety, I don't need the additional layer of protection with permissions (which can be circumvented by admin accounts anyways). Any suggestions of how to make TM backups nowadays that will remain accessible from any machine/user? I don't need to be able to "browse" them through time machine's interface (which hasn't worked reliably for very old backups anyways). In fact I would prefer to have the option access them as I used to through the Finder's folder structure – as long as I have permissions to do so.

I apparently deleted a message thread over 30 days ago, as Recently Deleted does not contain what I am looking for, however I validated the missing content was present on a device I had offline. After putting that device online and allowing it to sync with iCloud the thread has been deleted. My objective is to restore this thread. I have local iOS/iPadOS and Time Machine backups with this thread. What is the easiest method is to merge this missing thread/content into my current iCloud for Messages database?

Today I tried to do a Time Machine backup to an external disk. I got an error message saying the backup failed because a file "could not be backed up". File name was /private/var/root/Library/Logs/Bluetooth/bluetoothd-hci-2025-03-13_19-23-02.pklg This file didn't seem to be essential, so I deleted the file and tried again. Got another error message of the same type complaining about another file. Lather, rinse, repeat a few more times and I got suspicious. Initially I assumed the error was saying the source file could not be read. I checked the files, and I could open them in a text editor. Permissions also didn't look odd. What's going on? Edit: The SSD is a Crucial X9 Pro. I found an Amazon review that contains this gem: > Crucial Support told me that APFS (case-sensitive) often does this with this device, but nowhere in their documentation nor sales literature do they state this

Unfortunately, I have lost/forgotten the password for my old iPhone backups. I understand that I cannot access any old backups without having the password to those backups, but I want to be able to create usable backups going forward. It seems as if that password is burned into the phone forever and that I cannot create a *useable* backup now or in the future without having the old password. The only useful suggestion I have found is to Reset the phone, not clearing data, which some posts suggest will lose the keychain and Wifi passwords. So if that's the only way, is there a way to separately backup the keychain and Wifi passwords? Obviously I can't rely on the normal backup system.

Using Photos.app on the Mac and Importing all photos doesn't work (it gets stuck on "Importing 3 out of 2421...") So I switched to Image Capture.app which should be easier to debug. Image Capture.app fails if there are two photos with the same name excluding the extension. For example, there could be an IMG_1110.HEIC from this year and an IMG_1110.HEIC from last year in the list that Image Capture shows (perhaps because of AirDrop or copying photos via other means to the iPhone, I'm not sure how two totally different photos ended up there with the same name) and Image Capture will fail when it hits the second one (it says "Camera disconnected during import"). The same problem happens if there is IMG_0667.HEIC and IMG_0667.MOV. In these cases, the only solution I can think of is to go into my iPhone, delete the least desired of the two conflicting photos, then resume Image Capture's Download All. So I have to perform _a lot_ of manual intervention to import photos to my Mac using Photos.app or Image Capture.app, and it's also a huge shame that it's impossible to preserve _both_ files without going through a lot more pain and hassle. Please can someone teach me an easy, pain point-free way to just copy all the photos from my iPhone to my Mac.

How can I archive a my currently installed app version (particular version) of an iOS app (=export IPA file?) I am aware that apple removed the App Store from iTunes and that apps are not part of the backups any more. However I am looking for a solution with which I can draw my currently installed app version as IPA file before I upgrade. Since app authors can modify and remove functionality at will and Apple prevents people from going back to a previous version I would like to be safe, particularly when large changes happen. I have looked into iMazing but it only seems to be able to export the latest version from the AppStore to IPA (neither the currently installed version nor different version)

Assume that iCloud backups on an iPhone/iPad are disabled. Assume that there are files in the "Recently Deleted" folder and that there are photos in the "Recently Deleted" album. If one creates a normal backup of the iPhone/iPad, are the contents of the "Recently Deleted" album and the "Recently Deleted" folder backed up, too? What about if one creates an encrypted backup of the iPhone/iPad?

I have a Samba shared folder set up via an OpenWrt router. One sub-folder is currently used to perform an encrypted backup of a Linux machine with Déjà Dup. I created another sub-folder which I intend to use for backing up a Mac laptop. These docs suggest that I'll need to format the disk in order to make a backup with time machine. Does Time Machine really only backup if it can format the disk all for itself? Or can it backup to one folder, or, failing that, its own partition?

My Mac is on BigSur and I am using Carbon Copy Cloner to create a one on one disk which is bootable also. I have this setup running for years now and never noticed any problems – also on BigSur it worked. Now my Backup Drive crashed and I bought a new HDD. I have exactly build this HDD (one 1 TB partition for CCC for the one on one copy and another 1 TB partition for TimeMachine). But two major problems: The clone partition is the one that get booted after a restart – I also cannot choose another startup disk from system preferences since I only can see the actual booted one. So when I had booted with system SSD only this disk is shown and when I booted from the backup disk only this ons is shown. But the mac should boot from the internal disk by default, what could happened here? The Drive was always plugged in in a Thunderbolt 3 Dock. I also recently switched to an eGPU (Razer Core X Chroma) which now operates as my dock where the HDD is attached. But I think the problem occurred since the new replacement disk. Also when I plug in that drive directly on my macbook this drive get booted on restart. Another issue is that the TimeMachine partition of the disk get mountet sporadically and is making intense work but not running a time machine backup. I tried to disable the volume on spotlight which presents an error (time machine backup cannot be excluded since they are always excluded – something like that) but disabled it by command line with sudo mdutil -i off "/Volumes/TimeMachine". Now I think its better... Maybe you have an idea. Thanks! **-- Update** The regular automatic TimeMachine backup is disabled – I have an own task that runs every hour that mounts the volume, do the TM backup and unmount it. That also worked for years now.