How to set "Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac" as default

I have a MacBook Air running Sonoma and an iPhone running iOS 17.4.1

Every time I connect the iPhone to my MacBook Air using USB-C to Lightning cable, it resets the default in Finder to select "Backup your most important data on your iPhone to iCloud" which is NOT what I want.


I manually click on the selector to "Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac" and click Apply and the backup of the iPhone to the Mac works fine, then resets the button back to iCloud.


I never want to backup to iCloud for security and data usage reasons. I always back up to my Mac and then back up my Mac using both TimeMachine and CarbonCopyCloner to different external drives.


iCloud backup is turned off on the iPhone (Settings / AppleID / iCloud / Device Backups: iCloud Backup is off)

I do use iCloud on both Mac and iPhone to sync several selected Apps' data (Notes, Messages, Numbers, etc).


How do I set this iPhone and Mac to always "Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac" when I plug the iPhone into the Mac?

Posted on Apr 30, 2024 9:27 AM

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Apr 30, 2024 9:46 AM in response to snolan

A solution, from another thread:


while iPhone is connected

on the iPhone go to Settings / AppleID / iCloud / Device Backups : iCloud Backup to ON (yes, counter-intuitive)

do not do a backup

then turn it OFF again (Settings / AppleID / iCloud / Device Backups : iCloud Backup to OFF)

unplug and re-plug in the iPhone to the Mac


Woot - now default is to backup to local Mac

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How to set "Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac" as default

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