Move an iPhone or iPad backup to another location

💡iMazing 3
This guide is not yet complete or updated for iMazing 3. An update will be available soon.

iMazing has always made it easy to select a different location for your local iOS backups, but what happens if you want to change your backup location and preserve your existing backup data?

This feature is named Export Backup with Snapshots to Another Location and is available from iMazing's contextual menu (right-click on the device).

Here's how to Move an iPhone or iPad backup to another location:

1. Launch iMazing on your computer
2. Right click on the Device
3. Select the location
4. Choose whether to use the new location

Before you begin

Always make sure you are running the latest iMazing version, to do so select Check for Updates from the iMazing menu, or just download the latest available version for your computer below.

Download and install iMazing on your Mac or PC computer.

Step-by-step instructions

1. Launch iMazing on your computer

If you haven’t already, download and install iMazing. For more details please refer to our guide available for PC and for Mac.

2. Right click on the Device

From the Devices view, iMazing lists all devices that have previously been connected and paired with your computer. Right‑click the device whose backup you want to export, then select Export Backup with Snapshots to Another Location.

3. Select the location

Select the location to copy your device backup/snapshots to:
The operation will begin. Depending on the size of your backup, this can take some time!

4. Choose whether to use the new location

When the operation is complete, you can decide if you want to save this new backup location for future use, and if you want to use this new backup location for this device from now on.

💡 Tip: Backup locations can be managed from the iMazing Preferences > Backups section or for each device from device Settings > Backup Location section. Learn more about Managing Backup Locations.

💡 Background Info: iOS backups contain 100,000s of files and are very complex. iMazing is capable of maintaining multiple backups over time (snapshots) without duplicating files. As a result of how this is achieved, it is normal for your File System (Finder) to report that both the iOS device's backup folder and the iMazing.Versions folders are almost the same size. In reality, the iMazing.Versions folder is much smaller. The "reported" folder size does not accurately reflect the amount of drive space the backups are consuming, nor does it impact available drive space.
Example: If your iOS backup is 100GB and iMazing.Versions reports 105GB, you will only recover about 105GB of space if you deleted both (and not 205GB).