Created by Jon On July 1, 2023| Last Updated On March 30, 2024
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How many backups and versions (history) of backups does iCloud keep on your iPhone? You want to know this before you rely on your iCloud backups following a hardware failure or loss of your iPhone.
Regardless, knowing the backup capacity of iCloud can be a good idea if you work for a company with sensitive data on your iPhone. Keep reading below to know how many backups you can have on iCloud.
How Many Backups Does iCloud Keep On Your iPhone? A Simply Overview
Only One. Unfortunately, Apple only allows users to keep one iCloud backup per Apple ID. Whenever a backup is performed on any iOS device, the old backup will merge with the new one. However, there have been cases of multiple backups at a time.
If you want to check how many backups iCloud keeps on your iPhone, you may do the following steps below:
- Open the Settings App and tap on your Apple ID
- Select iCloud and tap on Manage Storage.
- Under the Backups section, you will see your backup. Tap on it to see the entire contents of the backup.
How many backups does iCloud keep on your iPhone? In general, it’s not much, as you can only have one backup in most cases.
Does iCloud Keep Backups Forever?
While iCloud can store data for a long time, if you turn off iCloud from your device and keep it off for 180 days, iCloud backups will be irretrievably deleted. This is standard practice when backups have a retention period. Therefore, iCloud backups aren’t permanent and can need regular maintenance.
Will I Lose My Photos If I Delete iCloud Backup?
The answer is NO. iCloud keeps the backup of your iPhone data separately on the cloud, and whatever data you delete on your iCloud will not affect the data on your iPhone device. This can also be said for your iPhone, as deleting data from it will not affect your iCloud backup and vice-versa.
The Best Alternative to iCloud Backup
It is true that your iPhone isn’t joined at the hip with iCloud, and with any manufacturer-bundled application, plenty of others will perform better.
A third-party iOS Data Backup & Restore application can be an excellent backup alternative to iCloud and iTunes. Unlike iCloud and iTunes, that merge and overwrite your data, 3rd party applications can behave in a way that users prefer.
You can run a full backup (all data) with a simple mouse click or selectively back up specific files you want to keep.
Conclusion
How many backups does iCloud keep on your iPhone? As you can have only one backup in most cases, data storage might be troublesome.
However, there are several ways you can buy storage for your iPhone device, such as by upgrading to iCloud+, keeping your backup on Google Drive, DropBox or similar etc.
