How to Back Up Your Android Phone or iPhone

70 million smartphones are lost each year, and only 7 percent of those are recovered. Mobile devices have the benefit of being small and easy to carry around, but this also makes them easy to lose or have stolen.

People accidentally leave their iPhone or Android phone behind on airplanes, in cabs and Ubers, and sometimes they’re pickpocketed at airports. They are easy to misplace, and when that happens, you can end up losing a lot of important memories in the photos and videos you’ve taken with your phone over the years.

It’s also not uncommon for someone to forget to properly backup and sign out of an iPhone before turning it in for credit when upgrading. This can cause all their data to be destroyed as soon as the phone is reset by the mobile carrier to prepare it for resale.

We use our smartphones for more than just making and receiving calls. They can hold:

Photos
Videos
Contact lists
Text message threads
Calendar details
Files you’ve downloaded from the internet
Email messages

If you don’t want to risk losing any of your valuable and irreplaceable files, it’s important that you backup your smartphone regularly or get tech tutoring help to do it.

Here are some ways to do that for iPhone and Android phone users.

How to Back Up Your iPhone

Option 1: iCloud Backup

Each Apple device user gets 5GB of free storage on iCloud, you can also pay for more if you need it.

You may already have your photos and videos automatically being stored in iCloud, but this is not the same as backing up your phone.

When you turn on backup for your iPhone (or iPad) in iCloud, it takes a full snapshot of your entire device, not just the files. This means that if you ever lost your phone, you could use your backup to restore everything, including your email, apps, settings, and files.

Here is how to turn on backup for your iPhone in iCloud:

Tap Settings > Your name > iCloud.
Tap iCloud Backup.
Tap Back Up Now.
Ensure you stay connected to the internet so the cloud backup can capture the data.

When this option is turned on, your iPhone will be backed up regularly to your iCloud account.

Option 2: iTunes Backup

You can also use the iTunes app on your computer to back up your iPhone if you like. This may be a better choice if your iCloud account doesn’t have a lot of space because iTunes will store your backup locally on your computer.

To do this, take the following steps:

Use the phone’s USB cable to connect your phone to your computer.
You’ll see a message asking if you want to trust the computer, tap Trust.
Open the iTunes app, if it hasn’t automatically opened already.
Look at the top panel for an icon showing your iPhone and click that.

Click Summary, in the left side menu.
Under the Backup menu item, click Back Up Now.

Option 3: Other Cloud Backup Services

There are other services you can use to back up your device and its contents. For example, if you use Microsoft 365, then you have access to at least 1TB of space in OneDrive. You can use the OneDrive app to back up your phone’s photos, videos, and other files.

Other cloud backup services that you can use include Google Drive, Dropbox, and iDrive.

How to Back Up Your Android Phone

Option 1: Google Drive Backup

Android users will typically sign into their Google account when setting up their phone for the first time. Google gives you 15GB of free cloud storage space, some of which can be used for your backups.

This cloud backup will usually be turned on by default, but you can double-check to make sure your phone is backing up by doing the following.

Open Settings > Backup and Reset (this menu may look slightly different depending on the version of your Android operating system)
Look to ensure that Back up to Google Drive, Back up my data, and Automatic restore are toggled to the “on” position.

Note, if you’ve recently updated your phone’s operating system, then the backup setting may say “Backup by Google One.” In this case, click the option and follow the on-screen instructions.

Google One is a new name that Google is using for its cloud services.

Option 2: Local Backup to Your PC or Mac

You can also choose to back up your Android device to your computer and store the files there instead of in the cloud. This is helpful if you are short on cloud storage space and don’t want to have to purchase more to back up your phone.

To do this on a Windows PC:

Connect your phone to your computer using a USB cable.
Swipe down from the top of the phone’s screen, and you’ll see an alert noting you’ve connected your device to your PC.
Tap the notification and choose “Transfer files.”
Allow the files to finish copying over.

To do this on a Mac: