Backup and recovery
Is your phone backed up?
Phones get dropped, lost, stolen and replaced. With a backup, a new phone can look like the old one within an hour.
1 min readChecklist
The short version
Phones hold photos, messages, contacts and the apps that sign you in. Losing one without a backup can mean losing all of it.
What is on your phone
- Photos and videos
- Text messages and chat history
- Contacts and calendars
- Notes and voice memos
- Authenticator apps used for sign-in codes
- App settings and data
Turn on backup
- iPhone: Settings, then your name, then iCloud, then iCloud Backup. Make sure it is on and check the date of the last backup.
- Android: Settings, then Google or System, then Backup. Make sure backup is on and check when it last ran.
Backups usually run when the phone is charging, locked and on Wi-Fi. If the last backup date is weeks old, check that there is enough cloud storage.
Things backups can miss
- Authenticator apps. Some include their own backup or transfer feature, and some do not. Check yours before you need it.
- Chat apps with their own backup settings.
- Files stored only inside certain apps.
Work data
Work email, files and Teams chats should live in Microsoft 365, so nothing important is stored only on the phone. If you lose a work phone, tell IT right away so they can protect the account and, if needed, erase the device.
Talk to us about your technology
Tell us what you run today and what is getting in the way. We will get back to you about how we can help.