Safeguard Your iOS Data

If an iPhone is lost, don’t let your data vanish too

For some, an iPhone or an iPad is as important as a Mac – hyper-portable computers for almost every task. If you do nothing to safeguard your data, it will be gone if a device is lost or damaged beyond repair.

Elsewhere in this feature, we look at safeguarding photos and videos, mostly through iCloud. That system caters for other apps – first- and third-party – as well. For example, iCloud can sync the likes of Notes, Contacts, Calendar, and Safari (bookmarks and website account details) across your devices. Many third-party apps and games also utilise iCloud. This means should you get a new device, this data should be fully recoverable.

The problem is everything else. If you’ve created amazing art in a painting app, or cracked level 50 in a brain-bending puzzler, that data will be gone if you lose your iPhone and those apps don’t use iCloud as storage. And then there are things like your personal setup, down to how you’ve arranged icons on your Home screen.