iPhone back up reverts to iCloud

This was driving me crazy and I finally took a leap of faith. Since my iCloud storage is full with iMessage attachments that I can't seem to get ride of I had no space left for a backup anyway. I tried this experiment and it seems to work - my backups are staying local.

Disclaimer: please note that since my iCloud storage is full, this may not work for someone with enough of iCloud storage for a backup; in my case, iTunes may be defaulting to local only in the case where iCloud is full. I'd love to hear if someone can verify this with ample space on iCloud to do a backup there.

• ignore the options on the mac/PC iTunes interface
  • the options are confusing, and this is a surprisingly bad user interface, coming from Apple!
• on the iPhone, go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > iCloud Backup
  • turn off the iCloud Backup option on the iPhone (this is key)
• connect your iPhone and do a backup
• when the backup is done, you should see something like this under Latest Backups:
  • either Your iPhone has never been backed up to iCloud
  • or if you did a backup to iCloud in the past, it should be an older date/timestamp (not today/recent)
  • a current timestamp for the recent backup you just performed, such as Today 10:59 to this computer

It doesn't seem to matter how you have the backup options configured on the mac/PC iTunes interface:

• • under iTunes > Preferences
    • with this turned on or turned off: Prevent iPods, iPhones and iPads from syncing automatically
  • and under the iTunes panel for the device, under Backups
    • with either Automatically Back Up or This Computer selected
    • or by pressing the Back Up Now button under Manually Back Up and Restore

I hope this helps, and hope to hear if anyone can confirm this works in all cases.

Thanks, Chris

I had the same issue on my iPhone 11 Pro. The fix was to toggle iCloud Backup on and off (even though it was already off) on the phone: Settings > Your Name > iCloud > iCloud Backup.

HSII wrote:

The backup option for my iPhone keeps changing from "Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac" to the iCloud setting automatically. I want my iPhone to back up to my MacMini, and not to iCloud.

I am running macOS Catalina 10.15.7 and iOS 14.4.

Every time I Sync the phone, or leave the page and refresh it, the Back Up option keeps changing to the iCloud option.

It's the same issue seen in these threads:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250692699

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251043157

Has anyone else seen this, and found a solution for it?

It seems that the default behavior has changed over the years or with different iOS and MacOS versions. This might be what Apple intended or it might be a bug. See below, the Community Specialist indicates that "backups via iTunes are not designed to happen automatically" -- now of course the backups are executed through the Finder not iTunes, but the point is the same. Also, tellingly, on this Apple page https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977 it explains how to "automatically" back up the iPhone to iCloud, but there is not corresponding instructions to automatically back up the phone to a Mac. I think this indicates that the backup to a Mac needs to be manually executed each time. Also, the response below from the Apple person indicates that automatically syncing can be configured but that automatic backups to the Mac can not.

Connect the device to your Mac and open a new Finder window.

Click on the device name to open the device and make a local backup.

I don't know. I only back up to my mini.