Using iMazing

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!

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.