They have to physically connect the phone to the Mac, and-importantly-remember to do it regularly. Now they have extra steps to get everything synced. Achieving that state involves turning off iCloud Photo Library and syncing the iPhone and Mac by hand if needed. There is no backup copy anywhere else.Ī relevant anecdote from a co-worker: They decided that they wanted to keep different photos on their Mac and iPhone. If you delete a photo from your Mac, it also gets removed from your iPhone, because it’s all in iCloud. iCloud Photo Library is what Apple calls iCloud’s ability to sync photos between Apple devices seamlessly. That’s convenient, and most of us use that functionality all the time, sometimes without even thinking about it since in most cases, it’s seamless. Take a photo with the iPhone and find it in your Mac’s Photos library without having to connect the phone to the computer. Add an event to the calendar app on your phone and iCloud pushes that change to the calendar on your Mac, too. ICloud helps you sync content between devices. There’s a big difference between syncing and backing up. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to assume that since your photos, contacts, and calendar sync between devices, they’re backed up. iCloud Sync Does Not = Backing UpĮven if the picture of your puppy’s first bath time is on your iPhone and your iPad, it isn’t backed up. Let’s talk about some of the pitfalls you can run into if you rely solely on iCloud, and how I back up my mobile devices. That might not sound like much, but it’s indicative of why it’s a mistake to rely on only one provider to protect your data (see our 3-2-1 backup strategy), especially if it isn’t a true backup service.Īpple promotes iCloud to its customers as a way to securely store information, photos, and other vital data, leading to a false sense of security that your data is safe from harm, when it might not be. But they’ve also made changes that reduced some functionality, like removing iCloud Documents and Data in an effort to move everyone to iCloud Drive. They’ve added some features to make it a world-class syncing service. Over the past few years, Apple’s made a lot of solid changes to iCloud.

It has been updated with the latest information on iCloud and backing up mobile devices. This post was originally published in April 2017.

Icloud findmyiphone