welcome back everyone my name is joel feld and today's video
is all about icloud backup here we go
so today's video i wanted to focus specifically on icloud backup because i think a lot of people
are more and more using mobile devices they want to have the convenience of not plugging
into a computer and icloud backup is one of the convenient ways and really one of the only ways
apple allows you to backup wirelessly to some type of cloud ecosystem i'll link another video below
that i did before on backing up to itunes either using your mac or a windows computer yes windows
computer or using the finder on newer macs and it touches a little bit briefly on icloud backup
but i wanted to make this specifically to icloud backup because i wanted to clarify some things
and just walk through the process so first thing i want to clarify is what icloud backup actually
does and what it actually backs up a lot of people may think that icloud backup backs up
everything a hundred percent it backs up your computer and that's just not true so first and
foremost icloud backup does not back up your mac or your windows computer at all it doesn't back it
up it allows you to sync content to and from those devices but icloud backup is not a backup solution
for your mac so icloud backup really is only for iphone and ipad devices the other thing that we
need to understand is the storage capabilities apple only gives you five gigabytes free
and i'm not gonna say free it's like just here's here's five five gigs like it's useless the five
gigabytes that apple gives you is is useless for any backup because if you were to buy any iphone
or ipad now today on the market or if you have one that's a few years old chances are it's either a
32 gigabyte 64 128 512 you can't fit a 64 gallon bucket into a five gallon bucket it's just not
going to work now i have a phone here that is signed in with an apple id i'm not paying for
any storage you may have seen this error before where you go into the settings and says hey backup
failed so if i touch this it's going gonna prompt me to go and buy more storage because i'm trying
to upload all of the content from this phone to icloud but that five gigabytes is just not enough
so here it's prompting me to go and purchase more storage well i don't want to do that
and another setting i'll look at if i go into icloud and choose icloud again if i
scroll down to icloud backup even though it's turned on notice right below it says
right below backup now it says this iphone cannot be backed up because there is not enough icloud
storage available so this is where i'd go back to one menu scroll up to the top and i can see that
my five gigabytes out of five gigabytes is used up i can no longer squeeze any more information
so what that means is if something were to happen to this device
and i haven't plugged it into a computer and i don't have that information saved anywhere else
photos text messages files you know the settings of your phone the folder configurations everything
that you tweaked about your phone if something were to happen to this it's all going to go away
because they don't have a backup and throughout the video when i reference iphone and ipad
they're they're pretty much identical it works the same exact way the settings are identical in how
to configure and set up and do icloud backups so you have to have enough storage in order to do an
icloud backup i have another link that i'll throw down below and that is a video talking about how
to upgrade your icloud storage if you need to now let's go ahead and go to my other phone which i do
have icloud backup on and let's go ahead and start with how do i turn it on where the settings at
so if i go into the settings of my phone and i go at the very very top under my apple id
this is my learn with joel account and if i scroll down to icloud and then i scroll down to icloud
backup because this is turned on it now does a backup every single day automatically if it's
connected to power it's locked and it's connected to wi-fi and it will even give you that little
message here on the screen saying automatically backup data such as your accounts documents home
configurations and settings when the iphone is connected to power locked in wi-fi and you can
touch learn more and it's going to take you to an apple support and actually shows you exactly what
icloud backs up now i'm going to take a step back and go back into settings and let's say
i turn icloud backup off now that's only turning off for this device because your apple id can be
used on multiple devices like my ipad so i'll jump to my ipad if i go to settings and go to the same
exact spot under icloud here and then i scroll down icloud backup is still on for this device
because they're independent of one another you can back up multiple multiple devices to your icloud
based off of how much storage you have so even though on my phone i've turned off icloud backup
it still remains on within my ipad now it's simple enough if i take my phone again i can just turn on
icloud backup it's going to reactivate it i'm just not losing a beat it just turns it back on
if i want to back up something manually i just say backup now and it just starts to
back up my device again if i go back to icloud in the top and i scroll back to the main top where it
shows me in my storage i have a nice visual chart of how much space i have available in icloud so
here i'm using 40.1 gigabytes out of the 200 gig plan and if i touch manage storage this is going
to show me exactly what is taking up space in this cloud environment so i can see that i have
icloud storage photos backups mail health messages all of this information and if i go to my ipad it
could be slightly different because i might have different apps on my ipad than i do on my phone
but in regards to backups notice i have 2.9 gigabytes worth of backups in my icloud
storage so if i touch that it's going to show me what backups are used so i have the learn with
joel ipad and i have learned with joel iphone which is this iphone you could have multiple
backups here if you've upgraded your phone recently and you know you have your old phone your
old phone possibly could be here and you could get rid of that old backup if you no longer need it
let's start with the first one the ipad backup if i touch this it's just going to purely tell me
what device it is the latest backup and how much space it's taking up and i can choose to delete
it or not now that is the backup of this ipad and i don't want to delete it but if this ipad i no
longer used or no longer had it i could delete this backup so it's not using up that storage
now if i go back a menu and touch the learn with joel iphone this iphone that's taking
up 1.4 gigabytes this now actually gives me more information because i'm on the device physically
that i'm backing up so here it shows me my latest backup how much backup size it's taking and i can
actually choose what apps i want to include in that backup so some of these apps you know like
garageband or google meets or keynote anything that you have often those apps can contain
information of what's in there and that's also backed up in icloud and you can toggle on what
you want to include and what you don't want to include this is where if i don't use premiere
rush at all that's another video editing app on your iphone and ipad and i don't want to include
that in the backup i just toggle the switch and say turn off and delete and now everything that
i do within that app is not going to be saved so if something happened to that content i would not
be able to recover it for that reason so you can pick and choose what you actually want to back up
within your icloud backup now let's say that i wanted to delete this backup i could go back to
manage storage go to backups i could choose this iphone backup and i can just say delete
backup down at the bottom and that would remove this backup completely and because everything
is still on this phone it's not really going to hurt anything but if something happened to this
phone i might lose some information now what's deceiving is let's actually discuss what icloud
really backs up depending on your settings and how you're actually using icloud it doesn't back up a
hundred percent of everything let me explain let me pull up a help article here on apple's website
and it talks about what does icloud backup and here it shows it's backing up app data apple watch
backups and if you automatically pair your apple watch to your phone apple watch is automatically
backed up for you device settings things like like the brightness and your ringer volume and if you
have favorites added in your contacts and if you create folders on your ipad and put
a whole bunch of apps in your folders that kind of information is backed up within your icloud backup
home screen and app organization text messages photos and videos on your iphone and ipad now
i'm going to pause there text messages and photos and videos on your ipad notice the little number
two here to designate find print so if i go down here number two says when you use
messages in the cloud or turn on icloud photos your content is automatically stored in icloud
that means that they are not included in icloud backup so what does that actually mean it means
that if i go back to the settings on my phone and i'm under the icloud settings so if we go back
to the main settings and i touch icloud at the top and i go to icloud
notice text messages here is turned on well text messages allows you to synchronize your
text messages from multiple devices so when you text me i get it on my phone i get it
on my ipad i get it on my computer because it's using icloud to send that text message
everywhere so that means that those text messages if i delete one they're deleted everywhere
and that is not included in a backup so if i deleted all my text messages right now did a brand
new icloud backup manually those text messages are not included in that backup very important
the other thing is photos and videos if i go to photos here the first option is icloud photos
and icloud photos is designed to synchronize your pictures and videos from all of your devices
so when i take a picture or video on my phone it automatically goes to my mac it can automatically
go to my windows computer and it can automatically go to my ipad but because that option is turned on
it means that they're not included in an icloud backup so how do why does that matter well
again just like the text messages if my son got my phone which he doesn't really get my phone at
all but let's say that he went into my phone and started deleting all of my pictures and i didn't
know and then a couple weeks go by and i realized all my pictures are gone now granted icloud saves
your photographs for 30 days that you can restore but let's just hypothetically say that that 30-day
time period has passed and so over those 30 days i now have gotten several more new icloud backups
but all of my pictures are gone on my phone and i can no longer recover them and because i was using
icloud photos they're also deleted off of all of my other devices so it's very important to have
a solution for an icloud backup for your photos and videos and that's where i personally like to
do one of two things either don't delete your photos which kind of defeats the purpose because
then you just grow and grow that library or you come up with some type of method i recommend
copying the pictures from the apple photos or a computer to a time machine or an external hard
drive or some option like that just know that if you're using icloud photos long story short they
are actually not included in your icloud backup now let's go on the uh the next one in line here
is your purchase history from apple services like your music movies tv shows apps and books all of
your purchases that you ever do are automatically backed up but they're also tied to your apple id
so even if i downloaded and purchased a song or video if i deleted it off this device i could just
resign in to the itunes store or and go through my purchase history and redownload all that content
now the content within there so let's say i download a racing game and i raced to level
100 and i beat all of those and i got a fancy little ferrari in my in my racing game now that
data would be stored in icloud under the icloud we go manage storage we go backups we go this phone
and if that app offers it it would show that here to back up the data of that racing game
so not every single app allows an icloud backup but majority of them do icloud also backs up
your ringtones and visual voicemail for your phone calls now some of the items that it does not back
up are things like your contacts your calendars your bookmarks your notes because all again all of
that information is stored in icloud it's designed to synchronize amongst all of your devices so if
you delete it here it's automatically deleted on your other device i have another video if
you want to check that out on how to restore from an icloud backup if you're ever in the point where
you upgrade your phone you get a new ipad and you want to restore from that previous icloud backup
you can do that as well the nice benefits the huge benefit of it is if you're traveling and you're
out and about and something happens to your device you can just go get a new device sign in with your
apple id and it's you can choose that backup and it's going to restore all the content from
what that old device looked like it will restore all the settings and your apps and it will
download fresh copies it'll start to synchronize your photos all of that so that is icloud
backup in a nutshell you really again it doesn't back up your mac it backs up your mobile devices
i will link this down here in the video below so that you can have it for reference i will link
a few other nice help articles here for icloud as well and yeah so that's icloud backup so thank
you so much for watching if you like this video go ahead click that like button if you learned
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