Selective Restore from Backup on iPhone?

[BuddyRich]

Is there any way to do a selective restore from backup on an iphone. My wife just got a new phone and I didn't realise her old 8+ was actually a 256GB model, and we are replacing it with a 128GB 13 Pro Max.

And of course she has 220GB used on her phone so all-in-one backups are failing due to lack of space on the new phone.

I am wondering if its possible to select what I restore from backup so I can fit it all in the new phone.

Alternatively, if I use iCloud (I have a 2TB plan), is there a way I can back it up but not restore it all to the new phone? On Mac there is a reduce library size, but I am not sure the iPhone does that.

 

[jetsam]

I don't think there is a way to do that with iCloud. The third party iMazing Windows/Mac app can do backups with selective restore. Some parts of that app are free, but I think the selective restore is a paid feature.

But wouldn't it make sense to get a phone with larger capacity than 128GB if your wife is already using 220GB? Just sayin...

 

[BuddyRich]

I don't think there is a way to do that with iCloud. The third party iMazing Windows/Mac app can do backups with selective restore. Some parts of that app are free, but I think the selective restore is a paid feature.

But wouldn't it make sense to get a phone with larger capacity than 128GB if your wife is already using 220GB? Just sayin...

It absolutely would have... egg on my face, I didn't realize she had a 256GB 8+ when I got the 13 Pro Max (or that apple made one that big back in 2017...) Its mostly photos that she's never backed up to PC, so I can just move them off the phone to PC and then do the restore with a smaller photo album or use the icloud backup (which would also give her an offsite backup of those photos...)

 

[eyoungren]

It absolutely would have... egg on my face, I didn't realize she had a 256GB 8+ when I got the 13 Pro Max (or that apple made one that big back in 2017...) Its mostly photos that she's never backed up to PC, so I can just move them off the phone to PC and then do the restore with a smaller photo album or use the icloud backup (which would also give her an offsite backup of those photos...)

In May, I had cause to back up all my photos to iCloud. I was replacing a phone and did not have the time to back up to iTunes. Over the years I've used Dropbox (Camera uploads are set to always upload every picture I take) so photos go to every device I use Dropbox with. Periodically I pull the photos off Dropbox to a location on my server.

So it means I've got every photo backed up somewhere. I have a 512GB iPhone 11PM, so I purchased a 2TB iCloud sub and backed up all my photos. Just wanted to let you know my experience.

My major problem is that quite a few of my photos are either screencaps or images saved from a browser. So, the underlying filenames don't necessarily indicate WHEN an image was taken. That became important later on.

As it turns out, iCloud did not fully restore every photo I had on the phone. Why, I do not know. But I spent a bit of time dumping all the back ups into the Photos app on my Mac so they'd get back to my phone. So, that's something to be aware of.

Second, because those screencaps and images I mentioned above didn't necessarily have dates on them, iOS assigned them a date and that was the actual date I was restoring the photos. So, if your wife has anything like this, the possibility that her photos/images come back out of order is likely.

I've kept the 2TB sub simply because I don't believe in keeping my photos and other items in just one basket. I was able to restore them all precisely because I had Dropbox, Google Photos and my server to grab from.

Don't know if that helps you at all but just wanted to make you aware that the order photos are in now might not necessarily be the same order when you're done restoring to your wife's phone.

 

[Florin Benga]

Hello,

I had a similar problem. I backed up an iphone 13 by 128gb and got a 133gb backup. Now he tells me I can't restore him because I don't have enough space on my phone. What is to be done? The phone is new, bought for about 3 weeks.