Backup your iPhone with a broken screen

It took me two days two figure out and I stumbled on your comment. Thanks for that tip. Like you said, nobody mentioned the holding up and down arrows at the same time to turn on and off the apps. Thanks!

A huge thank you to both jbuckner85 and kuris for their helpful comments. I followed jbuckner85's instructions to get the phone all set up to back up to the cloud, and kuris' instructions to also add a bluetooth keyboard so that I could sync with iTunes via a USB cable. I was able to save all of the important data on my daughter's smashed phone, which is a tremendous relief.

hey there..

so im currently going thru this very same thing. my issue now is that i believe i have siri disable. im about to purchase the keyboard but when i try to hold the home button to actuvate siri i get nothing?

i first unlock the phone by pressing the home screen once, but immediately after its unlocked a bunch of notifications pop up.

is there any suggestions if siri command isnt working?

Hi xtinabot,

please I want to know, if in this keyboard work move by arrows to move between icons? I bought one certified from griffin, but arrows doesn´t work, when I want to go down in settings to the wi-fi etc.

Please let me know.

Thanks,Jiri

thank you. This is genius. Took a while to figure out voice over and actually need a healthy iphone and try to use voice over to learn the steps before actually doing on a black screen. Now the phone is happily being back up, before I get a new phone. Thank you. Thank you!!

My screen was not cracked. Just the display doesn't work any ore. So the touch screen still function. I think you will at least has that.

- use SIRI to turn on voice over, voice over activate a button by double clicking. So you will have to be patience once voice over is turned on.

- Then voice over will announce everything I touch in the screen. And it helps me to unlock my phone. Took me a while though.

- once it's unlocked. I plug it in w my Mac right away to start the back up.

good luck.

Im having this exact issue! My iPhone has no display but i can hold the home button for Siri but then Siri herself tells me I'm not connected to the internet but i cant connect as my display is broken

Turning on voiceover via siri worked for me too, so then when I tapped around on the screen siri told me where I was tapping and I eventually hit the "trust" button to sync with itunes. Thanks for the suggestions!!!

Use iCloud to back it up automatically? Tap Settings > iCloud > Backup. If you’re using iOS 7 or earlier, tap Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup. Tap iCloud Backup to turn it on. Tap Back Up Now so that you can backup iPhone to the cloud. After you turn on iCloud Backup, iCloud will back up your content automatically. You can return to this screen to see when the last back up happened.

ogdenrd-I have this same issue. Apparently when you update the software you have to "reauthorize" your computer to connect with your iphone/ipad. I cannot do it because the screen cracked. I USED to have it set up to back up automatically to the computer but it apparently lost that as well. Please let me know if you find a solution.

You seriously saved my life!!!

I completely smashed the screen of my IPHONE 6 PLUS. However it still worked and I was still receiving texts, calls etc but I wasn't able to enter my passcode to backup my phone. I usually do it monthly manually because I didn't want to fork over icloud fees.. but I officially now think the $3 bucks a month is worth avoiding this headache.... ANYWAYS. I came across you suggestion but I thought it was a long shot, so I tried to access info with several different data recovery but none could get past the lock AND hitting trust computer. I also tried voice over with Siri but she split on me too.

So I took your suggestion to the "Genuis" bar at the apple store to see if they had that keyboard I could use to unlock my phone. They had no idea what I was talking about and I even showed them the thread and they still looked at me like I was crazy and said "you can try it but we don't think it will work".

So I believed in you man, I ordered this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UTUDK26?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_deta ilpage_o00_s00

And followed your instructions to the letter, even without Siri working, it still worked! Then to bypass the "TRUST THIS COMPUTER" Issue I imported my photos using image capture (because it was the only application that didn't ask me to "TAP TRUST" just "UNLOCK" once I imported, I could now get into itunes and FINALLY BACK UP MY PHONE!!

Moral of the story, sometimes the long shot is the best one and $40 bux to fix this issue is far better than all the other options I ran into with data recovery and I now pay $3 bux a month to back up to automatically to icloud to avoid this future nightmare!

So thank you very much sir!!! 🙂

This worked like a dream. I have 5,400 pics on my 6 plus and I was worried that I had lost the 2 months worth of pics since my last backup before I broke my phone. I had no display and the touch screen did not work. I couldn't back it up in iTunes until I unlocked it by entering the passcode which of course I couldn't. I bought this exact keyboard from Amazon and it arrived 2 days later with Prime shipping. I plugged it into a different phone first to find the sequence of buttons I needed to press on the keyboard to get the passcode screen to come up (press the "Control" button 2 times) then put in the passcode. The first time I entered it, I was incorrect and the phone vibrated so I knew then that I was where I needed to be. I punched in the correct passcode and then I plugged my phone into my laptop with iTunes already opened. iTunes immediately went to work. It recognized my phone, I synced it then I backed it up. I was also able to transfer all my pics to the laptops hard drive.

I learned a valuable lesson. Back my phone up more often and transfer pics to somewhere else secure as often as possible.

Thank you jbuckner85. The idiots at the Apple Store said I was out of luck and offered no help at all. They just wanted to sell me a refurbished phone for about $350 and take my phone. I am so glad I waited and found your post. Now I'll probably go get that refurbished phone and restore it with my new backup file.

I have a simaler problem , I have a half broken non working screen on I phone 6.

I need to back up my phone but it is the first time it has been connected to this computer so I need to press trust this computer , but the screen does not work to push .

Siri will not do it for me.

Any other tricks

Another happy reader of jbuckner's solution! Touchscreen stopped working, I don't load crap onto my computer, am so old I listen to music only on the radio so don't use I-tunes and iCloud back up got full a few months ago and since it is a work phone that I don't pay for, never did anything with paying for a cloud data plan.

Folks at the Genius Bar told me I was hosed. All sorts of unhelpful advice about how I should pay for more cloud data and rebooted about 100 times. This just made me unable to get past the 4 digit pass key (once you reboot, can't use Touch ID)

Sucked it up and bought this https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B014X03L08/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And was able to enter 4 digit pass key. Had to take phone to work to be able to connect to wireless (work had given me a new phone and deactivated old one but had set up different Apple ID on new phone) which then allowed Siri to work. Then told Siri to activate voice over.

Jbuckner's advice on how to enter/select using ctrl option space bar was invaluable. Still could never figure out how to trust computer (tried setting up head motion switches but this didn't work) but went to settings, did backup to cloud now (somehow cloud backup was now empty - probably new Apple ID), did backup to cloud now (a few glitches to get this to work) then voilà! Pix on iCloud and then I backed em up to hard drive and phone can now get shredded by the hospital.

Soooo satisfying! (Just like dealing with Genius Bar really unsatisfying)