Backup Options in iMazing

iMazing offers many options to configure how and where your mobile devices are backed up:

• Backup Encryption
• Backup Location
• Backup Snapshots
• Automatic Backup Scheduling

These settings are configured per device, and can be accessed at any time from the Device Settings section:

The first time you back up a device, iMazing will show the backup settings view, allowing you to adjust your settings before the backup starts.

Backup Encryption

Backup Encryption is an Apple security feature that protects your data. An encrypted backup includes data that unencrypted backups do not:

• Keychain
• Wi-Fi settings
• Health data
• Home data
• Safari history
• Call history

To protect your data, we strongly recommend enabling backup encryption for all of your devices.

iMazing does not encrypt your backups by default. To encrypt a backup in iMazing for the first time, you need to turn on the Backup Encryption option and set an encryption password. After you enable backup encryption, all future backups of the device will be encrypted, regardless of the software you back it up with.

❗ Warning: If you lose or forget your encryption password, you will not be able to browse previous backup snapshots or create new ones. Keep this password safe and make sure to click the Remember Password checkbox. The password is securely saved in your macOS Keychain or Windows Credentials.

You can enable or disable backup encryption from the Device Settings section.

To learn more about backup encryption please read our dedicated article: Backup Encryption in iMazing.

Backup Location

Choose the folder or disk where you'd like iMazing to store backups of the selected device. Each device can be backed up to a different location.

To change iMazing's default backup location (i.e. where iMazing backs up your device if you do not specify a location), see iMazing Preferences.

For detailed instructions on how to change your backup location, see How to backup an iPhone or iPad to an external drive, or another location?

Select an existing location (recommended)

Select one of the backup locations displayed in the list where you would like iMazing to store your device backup.

Backup location preferences

Click the Backup location preferences button to manage your backup locations and configure new ones.

💡 Note: When adding a disk as a backup location, iMazing will create an iMazing.Backups folder at the root of your disk to prevent permission issues.

Backup Snapshot

Here, you can customize iMazing's unique automatic Backup Snapshots feature. For an optimal backup management experience, we recommend the default settings.

Enable backup snapshots

iMazing automatically takes incremental backups, similar to Time Machine on macOS for your Apple mobile device, allowing you to keep multiple snapshots. Disk usage is optimized, enabling you to easily store dozens of backups.

For more information on iMazing backups, refer to Manage your iPhone or iPad backups with iMazing.

Automatically delete backup snapshots

When this options is enabled, iMazing automatically deletes your oldest snapshots when they start to take up too much space. By default, iMazing will ask for permission before doing so.

When it is disabled, iMazing will never suggest deletion of snapshots.

💡 Tip: iMazing will only start deleting your snapshots when their cumulative size is over half of your original backup.

For example, if your original backup is 20GB, iMazing will allocate 10GB of extra space for your snapshots. Once your snapshots take up more than 10GB, iMazing will start deleting your oldest snapshots to make space for the new ones.

Backup snapshots retention

As an added safety measure, iMazing only deletes backup snapshots if they have reached a certain 'age'.

Let's say iMazing has allocated 10GB of space for your snapshots, and your snapshot retention is set to 1 month. If within a week, your snapshots reach this 10GB limit, iMazing will not automatically delete your oldest snapshot, because it was made less than a month ago.

If the Always ask me for permissions before deleting backup snapshots. checkbox is ticked, iMazing will ask for your permission prior to deleting older snapshots. This option is on by default, disable it only if you are certain that you only need your latest snapshots.

Automatic Backup Scheduling

Enabling Automatic Backups will back up your devices on a specific schedule. We recommend making one backup per day.

Important considerations

⚡

• We strongly recommend enabling backup encryption to protect your data.
• Both iMazing and iMazing Mini can back up your devices via the local Wi-Fi network when your computer and Apple mobile devices are connected to it.
• The first backup made by iMazing or iMazing Mini can take a long time, depending on the amount of data stored on your device. We recommend connecting the USB cable to speed up the process. Subsequent snapshots are much faster because they are incremental and can be done over Wi-Fi. For more details about slow backups, please refer to our article: Understanding & fixing slow iPhone or iPad backups
• Since iOS 16.1, you need to enter your device passcode for every backup. This is a security measure imposed by Apple.
• If you run a backup manually, iMazing Mini will consider the backup done for the current day and will execute a backup operation only the next day.