Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, and many features are free, no purchase needed, like Quick Transfer and app management.

Download iMazing.

Everything is accessible, but we restrict the amount of items which you can transfer (see list).

You can use iMazing without restriction to back up your devices, but are limited only to the standard restore option with the free version (accessed via iMazing Mini). Advanced backup options are only available in the full version.

You may purchase a license from our online store or from within iMazing itself (either from the Trial window or the License menu).

Your license code will subsequently be emailed to you.

Please note: the iMazing Configurator feature set is for businesses only and requires one of the following: an iMazing Business Subscription, learn more here.

No. After purchasing a license, you will receive your license code to unlock iMazing’s full capabilities.

For consumers, iMazing offers two license types:

1. iMazing Personal - Device License (Perpetual)
   • “Device” is defined as an iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV or Apple Vision Pro
   • Unlimited use of iMazing for the life of the device
   • Unlimited tech support and free updates for the life of the device
   • Device slots cannot be revoked once assigned to a device
   • For lost or broken Apple mobile devices, please contact our support team immediately with the details. We trust our users and will quickly handle legitimate requests
   • Additional device slots can be purchased any time as needed
   • Install iMazing on as many computers as you like (Mac or PC); your license is limited by the number of Apple mobile device slots availabled
   • One-time purchase
     
     
2. iMazing Personal - Subscription
   • Unlimited use of iMazing with up to 20 Apple mobile devices per year
   • Unlimited tech support and updates during your subscription
   • Install iMazing on as many computers as you like (Mac or PC); your license is limited by the number of Apple mobile device slots available
   • Renews annually

_{* additional can be purchased if needed.}

Most iMazing customers are best suited with the device-based license, which provides you with unlimited use of iMazing, including all future updates, for the life of your Apple iOS or iPadOS device.

Power users with many devices or families looking to backup every device in their household may prefer purchasing an iMazing subscription that works with up to 20 devices per year, and allows iMazing to be installed on an unlimited number of computers.

We also make tools designed for system administrators and advanced IT professionals which as of November 2023 are included at no additional cost with iMazing Business Subscription:

• iMazing Configurator - Powerful tools to help sys admins provision fleets of Apple mobile devices; define advanced blueprints & configure devices in bulk. Works great with the freely available iMazing Profile Editor.
• iMazing CLI - Exhaustive command line interface for advanced interaction with iOS devices and backups.
• iMazing Account - The iMazing Account platform enables the management of iMazing licenses within an organization and the assignment of these licenses to users or clients. Soon, it will offer advanced features such as the ability to remotely configure and customize iMazing, delegate tasks to users, and guide them through tasks, providing a comprehensive, streamlined experience. These new features will be available later this year.

The primary reason is that we wanted to eliminate paid major updates, allowing our customers to enjoy new iMazing new features as soon as they're ready. We discuss the iMazing license model in a dedicated blog post.

Our licensing model is designed to eliminate the need for paid major upgrades. Linking a specific iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, or Apple Vision Pro device to your license is permanent and cannot be undone. Licensed devices can be used with all iMazing updates (including major versions), for their entire lifetime, on any Mac or PC computer. However, if your Apple device is lost or broken, iMazing fails to complete an expected task with a specific device, or you've mistakenly linked a device to your license, please contact our support team immediately with the details. We value our users and promptly address legitimate concerns.

As of November 2023:

• iMazing Phone Evidence has been replaced with the iMazing Business Subscription (same product and price, just a different name).
• iMazing Station is no longer for sale (existing customers can continue to renew their license).
• iMazing Configurator and iMazing CLI are now included at no additional cost with iMazing Business Subscription.
• Unlimited Devices (Personal) has been replaced with the Personal Subscription.

No, you will need to purchase one of our current iMazing Business Subscription, which includes those features at no additional cost. Please contact our enterprise sales team should you need assistance with this.

No, your license is valid for either platform.

Follow this link and we’ll send it to you right away.

For computer-based licenses like the iMazing Unlimited Devices license, you can remove your license from the iMazing main menu License > Remove License.

If you need to remove a computer from your license that you don’t have access to anymore, please contact our support team.

By design, devices linked to your device-based iMazing license cannot be removed.

In this way, iMazing is different from other device-based license models, like VPN services, which limit devices to restrict concurrent use. (See the next question to read why.)

That said, we understand misfortune can strike and are certainly not interested in profiting from such an event. If your Apple device is lost or broken, please contact our support team for assistance with your license.

Historically, desktop software like iMazing has been developed around the concept of paid upgrades, whereby every few years a substantial new version is released that requires existing users to pay an upgrade fee to obtain the latest features and compatibility.

Beginning in 2020, iMazing adopted a “continuous release” development cycle, which sees new features pushed out as they become available. We believe firmly that this results in a better experience for all users, as opposed to withholding improvements for months or years in the name of a future paid upgrade. iMazing also requires constant maintenance to ensure compatibility with all OS and device updates.

Most companies who have pursued this path have followed suit by adopting subscription-based licensing models to replace the future revenue they could expect from paid upgrades.

For a software company, subscriptions are appealing as they generate more consistent and predictable revenue.

But we fully understand and appreciate that consumers accustomed to perpetual software licenses or who only use an app occasionally can be turned off by subscription models.

As a result, we developed our own, novel device-based licensing system that simply ties the price of iMazing to the number of devices you’re using it with.

• This provides casual users who only replace their iPhone every few years with a reasonable price point to always use the latest version of iMazing as much as they want.
• While power users enjoy lower unit pricing depending on how many device slots they purchase at a time.

At the same time, if you prefer subscriptions or simply never want to hassle with hitting a device limit, we also offer an Unlimited Devices subscription.

We adopted our current licensing model, described above, in October 2020. This model eliminated paid upgrades.

Customers with a legacy license, purchased before that date, need to pay for major version releases.

iMazing 1 and 2 customers can upgrade to iMazing 3 at a 50% discount.

Beginning with iMazing 3, all legacy customers who upgrade will transition to our new license policy, which includes free updates forever.

If your license code starts with id, it's a legacy license.

Legacy licenses are tied to a specific iMazing version, newer licenses starting with imz are not.

Only if you choose to upgrade to iMazing 3.

Your license will continue to work with iMazing 2, although future support for iMazing 2 will be limited and no longer maintained following the release of iOS 18, expected in September 2024.

iOS and iPadOS devices are very secure: most of your data is not accessible directly.

As a result, iMazing relies on a local backup of your device in order to access its contents.

While some iMazing operations, like file transfers, do not need your device to be backed up, many others do, including reading message history, call history, notes, contacts, or voicemails.

Not at this time.

iMazing employs the exact same, Apple-engineered backupagent for its backups as Apple uses for Finder (Mac), iTunes (Mac/Windows), or Apple Devices (Windows) backups.

iMazing is also fully compatible with local backups initiated with one of Apple’s tools.

While Apple limits you to only 1 local backup for each device (its exact state when it was last backed up), iMazing uniquely supports multiple backups per device, also called snapshots.

This enables you to retrieve or restore data that might have been deleted between backups.

For example: you delete the conversation you had with a contractor from your phone after their job is done, but discover months later you need to reference it. Thanks to iMazing, you have weekly backups of your device and can easily retrieve that conversation from a previous backup. If you know macOS Time Machine, iMazing backups work similarly.

Since iMazing employs the same protocol as Apple, your first full backup with iMazing should be the exact same size as had Finder/iTunes/Apple Devices initiated the backup.

If you have enabled support for multiple backups with iMazing (“snapshots”), subsequent backups will only consume as much space as the new data on the device contains.

In other words, while your first backup could need 100GB (or more), subsequent snapshots could be less than 1GB.

For most users, new photos and videos captured with their device is often the biggest difference between the size of the backups.

Short of actually attempting a backup, the best way to gauge how much space you need is to examine how much storage your device is currently using.

You can find this by looking on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch under:

Setting > General > iPhone Storage

At the top, your iPhone will report how much space is used on the device. As long as you have that much drive space available on your computer, you should be fine.

(That number represents more than you will need for a backup since system files, music, apps, and cached files are not included with Apple mobile device backups.)

iMazing includes a feature called Data Access Only that can require much less computer drive space than a full backup of your device. (The difference is determined primarily based on the number of photos and videos on the device.)

When iMazing prompts you to back up your device, please try using Data Access Only instead of Full Backup.

If your computer continues to lack the available drive space needed to use iMazing, you may need to purchase an external hard drive if you are unable to free up enough space on your computer.

Fortunately, with iMazing it’s very easy to backup your devices to external drives!

⚠ Important Note: Data Access Only is not a backup of your device, nor can the data be restored to a device. It is simply for extracting data from your device to your computer, it is not a replacement for a backup.

This depends primarily on how much storage your device is presently using. A nearly new iPhone will take just a couple minutes, while a device with 1TB of storage might take as long as 2 hours or more.

The main bottleneck is Apple’s Lightning connector, which is limited to USB 2.0 speeds, even with Apple’s USB-C to Lightning cable. USB 2.0 is more than 20 years old and maxes out at 480Mbps.

iPad users connecting their device via USB-C or Thunderbolt will enjoy roughly 10x faster backup speeds than iPhones or iPads connected via Lightning. Secondary factors that can impact the speed of your backup include:

• The speed and connection of the destination drive your device is being backed up to.
• The speed and connection type between your computer and your Apple device when connected via Wi-Fi rather than a cable.
• If you are using antivirus software that scans your computer in real-time; Apple mobile device backups contain literally tens of thousands of files, which can create bottlenecks with antivirus software that slows your computer.

Read more about backups in this dedicated guide.

iMazing Mini is iMazing’s sidekick, a lightweight app that puts many capabilities just a click away. Mini is a Menu Bar app on macOS or a System Tray app on Windows. Its use is entirely optional, unless you are using iMazing’s scheduled backups, as Mini powers that capability.

Learn more about iMazing Mini.

iOS devices are not like USB keys or external drives: their file system is not entirely accessible from a computer. This is why using a tool such as iMazing unlocks so much potential: iMazing does a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes to present you with well formatted, easy to understand data, pulling it from services running on the device and from a backup of the device.

We have a very comprehensive set of guides designed to help you make the most of iMazing here.

Absolutely not!-

We firmly believe that your data belongs to you. None of your data is ever transmitted to or stored on any servers.

All the data on your device remains on your device.

Backups of your device are stored locally on your computer at the location you choose from iMazing and can be encrypted (which we strongly recommend).

iMazing cache files are stored in the default system locations, and can be easily cleared from iMazing’s settings.

Launch iMazing and open iMazing Settings:

1. Select Reset to Factory Settings, then quit iMazing
2. Uninstall iMazing
   • Mac: Drag iMazing from your Applications folder to the trash, then empty the trash
   • Windows: Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features > Select iMazing and click Uninstall

Please note: You may also want to delete the pairing records between your Apple mobile devices and your computer, which can be done from: iMazing Preferences > Devices > Remove All Pairing Records.

If you plan to continue to use your device with your computer but without iMazing, you do not need to do this.

For security questions related to iMazing, please refer to our Security & Privacy page.

For information about our website and services, see our Privacy Policy.

Please visit iMazing Support and review our troubleshooting guides for common issues.

You may also submit a ticket to our support team. We typically answer all requests within 24 hours.

Our dedicated in-house team is happy to assist you with any questions!

Sorry, no. As we are a small firm with customers worldwide, it is impossible for us to provide phone support.

DigiDNA has always been headquartered in beautiful Geneva, Switzerland.

All of our products are developed in Switzerland exclusively.

We are proud of our Swiss heritage and champions of its values, especially integrity and privacy.

Please! We can’t wait from you.