Not sure if I've asked this before but I can't find it if I have; looking for an app that can back up over wifi to a local PC for all my family phone's they're appalling at actually connecting to iTunes and doing it. I'm hoping an app on their phone will make things easier.

iCloud does this automatically, why not use that? It won't be to your PC, but it'll be backed up.

Because we have terrible broadband and huge amounts of data. There's 5 of us and we all have plenty of stuff on our phones.

Trying to do a restore from iCloud is a complete nightmare off our home network.

The free WiFi inside most Apple Stores is quite fast. Walk in, connect to WiFi, begin restore.

The Genius Bar may even offer a power cord to keep the battery up and tuck your (new) iPhone out of sight while it works through the restore.

If you just bought a new/replacement iPhone, you are there anyways

I back up my phone to iTunes. In fact it's the only thing that I use iTunes for, I don't use it to sync or manage music or content, thanks to it displaying a dialog box (every time I try) saying that it will erase my iphone if I try to sync any music or content. So I just use it for a full backup of the phone. The backup button works even when I have turned off the syncing features.

I believe that it may be possible to do that same full backup process via WiFi, though I do all my backups wired. Not sure about automatic settings; I do it by manually selecting the "backup" button, but there may be automatic options.

There are sites on the internet which say that AnyTrans will back up your iPhone via WiFi. Though I might use those kinds of products (third party sync products) for uploading songs to my iPhone, I'm not sure I would trust them will full backup/restore or not. Keep in mind that the most important part of backing up is that the restore process needs to be reliable. Since iTunes backup and restore features are designed and tested by the people that made the phone, I feel like I can trust that one. I'm not sure about any others.

You must set a password specifically for iTunes backups. If the backup itself is not password protected then iTunes will exclude iPhone saved passwords and saved login type data from the backup.

And you must KNOW that iTunes backup password. The password is required to restore from the backup.

There is no ‘reset password’ feature, and once set the old password can not be changed unless you know it. Even if you connect the iPhone to a new computer, the old password remains in control.

A family member is in this position, and they cannot change the password nor use their iTunes backups. They just do not recall what password they originally chose. So they can ONLY use iCloud backup and restore. Been this way through a couple of iPhone upgrade cycles so far.

I am seeing some instructions on the net of how to set up automatic backups of iPhone to iTunes over wifi on home network. These are instructions on Mac, but I think Windows would be similar.

https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-set-up-iphone-wifi-backups-on-a-mac/

However, they use the word "Sync" here instead of "Backup". The terms tend to be interchanged a lot in iTunes documentation, but I don't think they're exactly the same. They do not make it clear what the difference is between Sync and Backup.

Some articles from Apple which don't really help clarify that issue, unfortunately:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8752
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204136

I did this the last time I got an iphone, it was surprisingly quick. You can do your initial backup at the apple store and icloud will incrementally backup the stuff you add along the way.



They are also the people that made itunes... I needed to wipe my iphone as part of unlocking it, and I did a full wired back / restore. Sort of... it turns out itunes doesn't backup any music you didn't buy through itunes...

Yeah, it's stuff like that which makes me use third party tools to manage the music, while still depending on iTunes for the backups of everything else.

that keeps me way from Apple entirely, and iTunes in particular.

Yes, I am grumpy old curmudgeon.

tanstaafl.

I've never been inside an Apple store, the only time I tried (for a battery issue) I was told to wait in the line to see one of the geniuses outside the store, after 30 mins they told me I needed to download the app to make a booking, next available booking was 3 days away. I went to an independent instead

Backup vs sync is something that's worried me in the past. The wife and kids get me to do all upgrades so I always do an iTunes backup before upgrading. I guess the bit that I'm more worried about is when they destroy/lose their phones and lose all their photos and other content. I no longer use iTunes for my music, MediaMonkey does it better.

Thanks for the suggestions, I've been trying out Acronis TrueImage that seems to do a fair job but I'll try some of the other suggestions.

Curious about the Wifi backup features of iTunes, since you brought it up, I set them up for my iPhone and they worked. This was all on a Mac, but I'll bet they're identical for Windows.

I was able to backup my iPhone to my computer over Wifi using iTunes once I set it up. It's just a couple of checkboxes in the "Summary" screen. You just need to turn on the checkbox that says "sync with this iPhone over Wifi". (I also had to reboot the computer and the iPhone to let them find each other, but after that it worked.) The confusion before was due to the fact that, though the checkbox uses the word "Sync", the Wifi setting really applies to both syncs and backups.

Then I performed an actual backup, not a sync, by pressing the actual "Back Up Now" button. (Note that I have iTunes configured so that it doesn't manage/sync the music, videos, and books on the iPhone, those sync features are all turned off.)

It worked, it backed up the iPhone, over Wifi, to the computer. The same screen has a setting which says "Automatically Back Up - This computer", though I haven't let it "sit there" long enough to watch it back up the iPhone automatically. My guess is that if I left iTunes up and running and minimized on the computer, then at some point it will just automatically back up the iPhone over Wifi. I'll report back if I ever see it truly doing that automatically.

Though I would understand if you don't ever want to touch iTunes at all, or don't want to leave it running all the time just for getting backups.

I'm curious about how well you do, in the long term, with third party packages for this. My fear would be that backups won't restore properly if I used a third party tool. For example, if an iOS upgrade happened and the backup was missing something critical that was new in that version of iOS.

A quick final note, if you ever do back up with iTunes, there's a checkbox option for encrypting the backup. You want that turned on, because, if you don't turn it on, then it won't back up secure things like all your saved wifi passwords, forcing you to re-enter all your passwords when you restore the backup to a new phone.

Thanks Tony, will try that when I get a chance, I never knew that you need to encrypt backups to get a full backup.

Is there any point in NOT encrypting backups? I've never actually looked at one, could I foe example copy photos from a backup?

I believe that there may be third party tools designed specifically for digging into backup files to recover some of the content. So that might be a reason some people might prefer to leave the backups unencrypted. Personally, I would rather have the convenience of my phone saving its wifi passwords and keychain.

Yep

I've left the phone sitting there and iTunes sitting there running for a couple hours and it hasn't done an automatic backup yet, despite showing as connected over WiFi.

So perhaps the words "Automatically Back Up" on that screen in iTunes are a little misleading. Maybe you have to press the "Back Up Now" button. Too bad.

Yeah, this page says that it should be working:

https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/21/become-tech-savvy-how-to-setup-automatic-backups-iphone-ipad-mac/



Not happening.

I’m fairly sure Apple have never said it will backup to iTunes over WiFi automatically, whatever that text in the UI seems to suggest.

It does music/video etc automatically when charging, but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t ever backup automatically.

Agreed. The behavior that I'm seeing supports what you're saying, despite what the UI says and despite what that 9to5Mac article says.

So I guess you have to use iCloud backup to get it fully automatic. And of course they don't offer enough free iCloud storage space to make automatic backups be free, so the only way you can have automatic backup is to pay into that cash cow for additional storage. Too bad.

Now I'm even more interested in how those third party tools work out for Tahir.

Automatic works as described by the UI from my experiences.

For Windows users, make sure Bonjour is also installed and enabled as this is what iTunes uses to find your iPhone on the network. The PC/Mac and iPhone need to be on the same network, not an isolated guest network or similar.

Been using iCloud backups for a bit now, though the automatic WiFi backup is what I used for years prior. Yesterday I connected my phone to the computer for the first time, checked the WiFi box, and set automatic backups to the computer instead of iCloud. Disconnected the USB cord, dropped the phone on the Qi charger, and it started a backup (step 2 of 5 in the overall process here).

Today I used the phone for a bit, dropped it back off in the charger, and saw a new backup session starting automaticially. ITunes should also seek out phones on the network when freshly opened.

Hm. I’ll have to find some troubleshooting articles to find out what’s up.

I think the thing that was preventing it from automatically backing up wirelessly was related to the encryption setting.

I had previously backed up the phone manually, wired, encrypted, many times, and also backed it up manually, wirelessly, encrypted several times. So I know that encrypted backups work. But it was refusing to automatically back up, wirelessly or wired.

After Tom confirmed that it *should* have worked, I suspected something related to the encryption. Steps I took:

I pressed the "change password" button for the backup encryption. My goal was to just force it to rewrite the password without changing the password, so I entered the same password. It gave me an error message saying that the password was invalid, which was weird (I was certain of the password).

So I unticked the encryption box. Again it prompted me for the encryption password to unlock the encryption. I entered the same password again. This time the password worked and the encryption feature became turned off.

Then it immediately began an automatic wireless backup. It's doing the backup now.

I want it to be encrypted, though, so I'll try re-activating the encryption again, and see if it continues to work after that.

It also backed up successfully as soon as I turned the encryption back on and re-entered the password. However I ran into a snag:

When turning the encryption back on and re-entering the password, it gave me an error message saying that it was unable to set the password, and offering to try again. Trying again also did not work.

Then I turned the phone's LCD screen back on (it had turned off the screen because of a small amount of idle time). As soon as I turned the LCD screen back on, it was able to set the password.

As soon as it successfully set the password, then it began backing up immediately.

I am still not sure if these last two successful backups were "automatic". since they were in response to turning the encryption on and off. Both happened immediately after making a successful change to the encryption setting.

I'll have to wait and see if this tweak actually results in a truly automatic wireless backup.

No, still no automatic backups. It successfully backs up over WiFi when:
- I press the Back Up Now button.
- When I activate or deactivate the encryption.

But so far, still not backing up automatically.

Shown is a screen shot of my settings. The last backup time shown in that screen shot is the time that I changed the encryption settings, and it backed up immediately after changing those settings.

Note that my iPhone is unlocked, its screen is on, it is attached to a power charging plug, and it is connected to the same WiFi network to which the MacBook is connected. I have also tried connecting it to an iPhone charging dock which is connected to the MacBook, but it also does not automatically back up when connected that way either.

Been away, I'll try and have a play with this next weekend