Back up your iPad
Moving to a new iPad, or iPhone? Here’s what you need to know to get everthing right
Moving to a new iPhone or iPad? Well, there are multiple ways of doing that, too. Whichever option suits you best, it’s a very good idea to ensure that you have a full backup of absolutely everything on your current device before you move to your new one, and that you keep backing up your new device to keep your important data safe.
Apple offers two kinds of device backup: wirelessly to iCloud, and via a cable to iTunes or Music, with the backup stored on your Mac. The former is more convenient but you’re limited by the size of your iCloud account, which for nonstudents is 5GB unless you pay for a larger storage capacity or have an Apple One subscription.
There is a workaround, though: if you go into Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Prepare For New iPhone, you can get 21 days of extra iCloud storage to move your apps and data to your new device.
Once that 21-day period is over, you revert back to your standard storage amount, and the free 5GB tier just isn’t enough to backup even the most modest iPhone. That means you’ll need to get more storage if you want to keep using iCloud for your backups. You can get more by going into Settings > iCloud > Manage Storage; the cheapest upgrade is currently 79p a month for 50GB, rising to £2.49 for 200GB and £6.99 for 2TB.
If you’re moving from an Android device or Chromebook to an iPad, you have multiple options here. If you’ve been using Google’s services and apps such as Google Photos, Google Calendar, Google Chrome and so on, which are the defaults on most Android and Chromebook devices, you can install Chrome on your Mac and access Google’s apps in that or in Safari. If you’d rather use Apple’s apps, use Google Takeout to export your data in Apple-friendly formats. We’ll show you how to do that here.
HOW TO Back up an old iPhone or iPad to iCloud or Mac >
You can see your device’s backup settings in Settings > [your name] > iCloud > iCloud Backup, where you can enable iCloud Backup and tell your iPhone or iPad to back up now. iCloud backup is very convenient but it can also be slow.
If you connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, it’ll appear in the Finder sidebar once you’ve told the device to trust your computer. Here, our iPhone is currently set to back up to iCloud. Let’s change that to ‘… to this Mac’.
Your Mac will ask if you want your backup encrypted. You do, or your Mac won’t be able to back up passwords, health data and HomeKit data from your iPhone or iPad. Click on Encrypt Backups and enter a password to protect it.
