One backup is never enough. An automatic service like iCloud is great: if your phone ends up in a ditch somewhere, you won’t lose all your family’s photos. But an iCloud backup doesn’t cover everything on your device. That’s why you should do it the old-fashioned way and create a local backup on your Mac or PC.
How to Backup Your iPhone to Windows PC for Free
Over the past few years, Apple has changed how its local backup system works, removing many of the obstacles of the old days. For one, you can now back up to your computer over Wi-Fi, so you don’t have to plug your phone into your machine every time you want to back up. (Note: You’ll have to plug your iPhone into your computer the first time and select “Show this iPhone when on Wi-Fi,” but from then on you’ll be able to back up to your machine whenever your phone is plugged into a nearby power source.)
More importantly, local backups are “iCloud-aware,” which can save you a lot of storage space. According to Apple, anything you already have safely stored in iCloud — like your photos, videos, iMessage conversations, and Health data — essentially won’t be backed up to your Mac. Even a 200GB iPhone backup could be less than 20GB on your Mac (to use my own recent backup as an example).
If you prefer, local backups can also be end-to-end encrypted. This requires a separate password, but it’s worth it: an encrypted backup makes an exact copy of the state of your iPhone, including things like app logins, backup account statuses, and settings you’ve configured within apps. A non-encrypted backup won’t save some of these things since the files aren’t as well protected, so consider going through the extra setup.