Make Sure to Back Up iPhone Photos on Your Mac

ByEmily Dolloff

If your iPhone were to be stolen or suffer an unfortunate accident, would you lose all your precious photos? Those using iCloud Photos are probably shaking their heads smugly, thinking that all those baby and vacation photos are backed up securely in iCloud. iCloud Photos does indeed store a copy of all your photos, but you shouldn’t assume that everything in it is completely protected. Although it’s extremely unlikely that Apple’s systems would fail so that you’d lose anything, the contents of your iCloud account aren’t as safe as would be ideal.

An Aside to Explain Why iCloud Isn’t Perfectly Secure

Recently, Wall Street Journal reporters Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen covered a troubling form of crime aimed at iPhone users in an article (paywalled) and accompanying video. Thieves hang out in bars, looking for users who tap in their passcodes instead of using Face ID or Touch ID. Once they’ve learned someone’s passcode with surreptitious shoulder surfing, they grab the iPhone and run. As soon as they’re clear, they use the passcode to change the user’s Apple ID password and enable or reset a recovery key, which prevents the user from employing Find My to locate and lock the iPhone. Worse, with the passcode, they can make purchases with Apple Pay, access all passwords in iCloud Keychain, and use other information on the iPhone to facilitate identity theft. It’s a disaster.

But it gets worse, as the reporters detail in a new Wall Street Journal article (paywalled) and video. By enabling a recovery key, the thief disables Apple’s normal account recovery process for resetting the Apple ID password. In other words, if this were to happen to you, along with all the financial losses and headaches, you would lose access to your iCloud account, possibly forever, and with it, all your photos in iCloud. With luck, Apple will block this attack soon.

For now, follow this commonsense advice to reduce the chances of being victimized:

  • Pay attention to your iPhone’s physical security in public.
  • Always use Face ID or Touch ID in public.
  • If you must enter your passcode in public, conceal it from anyone nearby.
  • Never share your passcode beyond highly trusted family members.

Backing Up Your iPhone Photos

As with so many other modern ills, good backups go a long way toward minimizing the pain of problems. They won’t prevent someone from stealing your iPhone or locking you out of your account, but if that were to happen, at least you won’t lose all your photos!

There are two possible backup scenarios. Using iCloud Photos and downloading originals to your Mac is easiest but requires that you pay Apple for more storage if you have more than a handful of photos. If you don’t use iCloud Photos, you can just back up your iPhone to your Mac or, better yet, import images into Photos on the Mac and then sync them back. It’s more work and fussier, but doesn’t cost anything.

  • iCloud Photos: When using iCloud Photos, the trick to protecting your pictures is to sync the originals with your Mac. In Photos > Settings/Preferences > iCloud, select Download Originals to this Mac. The only downside of this approach is that you need enough disk space on your Mac to hold them all; if that’s not the case, you may need to move your system Photos Library to an external hard drive.
  • iPhone-only photos: If you aren’t using iCloud Photos, the best approach is to connect your iPhone to your Mac using a USB-to-Lightning cable or Wi-Fi and then import new snapshots into Photos on your Mac manually (select the iPhone in the Photos sidebar). It’s helpful to remove the original photos from the iPhone with the Delete Items checkbox after importing so you can manage them solely on the Mac.

    Then you can sync all the photos (or just desired ones, if your iPhone is low on space) back to your iPhone using the Finder. First, select the iPhone in a Finder window’s sidebar. Then click Photos in the button bar at the top, and select “Sync photos to your device from Photos” along with “All photos and albums” and “Include videos” in the options below. Finally, click Apply or Sync.

    Technically speaking, backing up your iPhone to your Mac without syncing to Photos also backs up your photos, but the only way to get them back is to restore a backup onto an iPhone. It’s much better to have all the photos accessible in Photos too.

Either way, once the photos are on your Mac, you should back up all your data using Time Machine, an Internet service like Backblaze, or a third-party app like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. If you’re concerned about the quality of your backups for preserving photos, contact us for advice.

(Featured image by iStock.com/metamorworks)

Social Media: With new reports of iPhone theft victims being locked out of their iCloud accounts, it’s all the more important that you copy your iPhone photos to a Mac and then back up that Mac.

Similar Posts

  • The Little Guy(s)

    You know I am a rabid Boston Celtics fan, and I have been since I was a child listening to games on my transistor radio, searching for the gravely voice of Johnny Most. These days our All-Star and team leader is Isiah Thomas who NBA hall of famer, Tommy Heinsohn, always refers to as the “little guy”. We have been thinking of changing our dog, Max’s name to the little guy as a result.

    It was little iPhone and little iPad Pro day at the Apple event. Apple introduced the 4-inch iPhone SE and the iPad Pro 9.7-inch tablet. In other hardware announcements, there were new watch bands for the Apple Watch and a new Lightning to USB 3 camera adapter. The original iPad Air is now discontinued and the iPad Air 2 with a more limited selection becomes the entry-level 9.7-inch iPad.

    I have gotten used to the size of my iPhone 6 but there are many people that want a smaller iPhone. Having a big iPhone 6 or 6+ sticking out of your back pocket is an invitation to theft and they do get a big bulky in the front pocket of your jeans. The iPhone SE uses the iPhone 5 form factor, with a 4-inch screen and aluminum case. The iPhone SE is not crimping on power though, as it meets almost all of the specifications of the iPhone 6s. It fails to match up to the current iPhone lineup only in the lack of the 3D Touch technology, the Taptic Engine that provides feedback you can feel, and slower wireless networking. It’s either $399 or $499, with 16 GB or 64 GB of storage, and comes in the same four colors, Silver, Space Gray, Gold and Rose Gold. We have found that most cases for the iPhone 5 should work with the iPhone SE. These are shipping on March 31.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4692.png!

    The 12.9-inch iPad Pro, introduced last year with the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, has enjoyed some moderate acceptance as a productivity device. I can see how for some, it might be their only device. And for artists, architects and others the iPad Pro is a digital drawing board like no other. But it is 12.9 inches and that is just a bit large for some. Apple introduced the 9.7-inch iPad Pro to meet this need, which meets or exceeds many of the larger model’s specs.

    For instance, the smaller model’s screen can display more colors and adjusts its white balance to match the ambient light in the room. Its cameras are notably better — the rear camera is 12 megapixels instead of 8 and has a True Tone flash, while the front camera is 5 megapixels instead of 1.2 and can use the screen as a flash. Plus, the new iPad Pro can record 4K video instead of just 1080p. I assume we will see these upgrades to the 12.9 inch iPad Pro in the future but the smaller version is a powerhouse.

    The 9.7-inch iPad Pro’s A9X chip is somewhat slower, it has half the RAM, and its Lightning port transfers data at only USB 2 speeds. But if the size is right for you, prices start at $599 for 32 GB of storage and go up to $899 for 256 GB. It will be shipping on March 31 in four colors: silver, gold, space gray, and rose gold. Cases and accessories designed to fit the iPad Air 2 should work with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. We have our orders in with Apple and should have stock by the launch date. I think this new iPad Pro is going to be the iPad of choice for a lot of people.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4689.png!

    Apple also introduced the $39 Lightning to USB3 camera adapter. It is much more than a camera adapter though and opens the Lightning port to a lot of USB devices. With the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter, it’s easy to transfer photos and videos from your high-resolution digital camera to your iPad Pro.
    If you connect with a USB Power Adapter, you can connect USB peripherals like hubs, ethernet adapters, audio/MIDI interfaces, and card readers for CompactFlash, SD, microSD, and more. This is a new and important step by Apple in making the Lightning port much more versatile.