Every once in a while, a friend will ask me what to do when some terrible thing has happened to their iPhone. Usually, it involves the device crashing or freezing. And usually, it involves someone who doesn’t back up their data. Before I move on, let me just say this. If you don’t back up your data, don’t complain when all 975 images of the past year of your baby’s life have suddenly disappeared from your iPhone. Don’t be a fool. Step 1: First, download My Contacts Backup from the App Store. There are actually a few good apps that do exactly the same thing, but we will be using My Contacts Backup for this tutorial. Step 2: Launch the app and tap the “Backup” button and watch as the app quickly backs up all your contacts. Step 3: Tap the Email button and send yourself this email. Save this email in a folder, or maybe save a copy of the file on your computer. Now, the great thing about this app is that the contacts are saved as vCard using the .vcf file format, which is the same format used by your iPhone or iPad (and many other devices).
If your iPhone ever takes a powder on you, you can be sure to have all of your contacts securely saved in an email file. I even added my iPhone’s contacts to my Gmail contacts so they would be the same. If you don’t want to save your contacts as vCards, you can also send yourself a csv file that can be opened in Excel as a list. Just change the file extension in the settings section of the My Contacts Backup app. You can download My Contacts Backup for free in the App Store. According to the developer’s website, the PRO version includes no limits on how many contacts you can backup. However, I was able to backup 824 contacts from my iPhone with no issue using the ad-supported free version. The PRO version also includes a weekly backup reminder, iTunes file sharing support, Wi-Fi editing, multiple vcf exports, and in-app vCard restore. The only reason you might need the PRO version is if your vcf file is so big that your email service blocks it. The in-app vCard restore lets you use the saved backup file right in the app instead of sending it to yourself through email.
By default, iTunes will make a backup of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch when you sync your device on your Mac or PC. You can also initiate backups manually in iTunes when upgrading or restoring a device. This makes keeping a secure copy of your iPhone’s data easy, but as iDevice storage capacities have increased, so too have the size of backups. If you sync or backup multiple devices to a single computer, these backups can take up dozens or even hundreds of gigabytes. Here’s how you can view and delete iPhone backups in iTunes, potentially freeing up lots of storage space. Listen to millions of songs for free with a 30-day trial of Amazon Music Unlimited. Devices. Here, you’ll see a list of all devices you’ve backed up to this computer (by device name) and the date and time of the last backup. If you have multiple devices with similar names, or if you’re just not sure which backup corresponds to which device, simply hover your mouse or trackpad cursor over one of the entries.
A small window will pop up providing unique information about the device, such as serial number and associated phone number (if applicable). From here, things diverge a bit in OS X and Windows, so we’ll address each operating system separately, below. To see the size of your iPad or iPhone backup, right-click (or Control-click) on the desired backup and select Show in Finder. A new Finder window will open revealing the folder containing the backup. You won’t be able to read any of the information in this folder without third party tools, but you can use a Get Info command to ascertain the backup’s size. To delete a backup, head back to the iTunes Preferences window, highlight the backup in the Devices list, and click the Delete Backup button. Tunes will ask you to confirm your choice; click Delete to do so. Things aren’t so simple with Windows, as right-clicking on a backup in iTunes won’t reveal any options. You therefore need to locate your backups manually.
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