Backup your iPhone with a broken screen

You DID it for me!!! I had to figure out a couple roundabout things on my own as well, but ultimately, if it weren't for your help, i would've been s.o.l. THANK YOU.

And to all the "responsible people" who backed up your stuff before and avoided this problem, good for you, but you're really NOT helping by telling people after the fact that they should've backed it up. It's really discouraging to someone who's already in or close to despair over their lost memories. And, like me, even having backed up somewhat recently wouldn't have solved my problem of a broken touchscreen and a phone that forgot who or what it trusted. So please keep your unhelpful borderline self-righteous comments to yourself and try saying something encouraging or helpful instead. None of us are perfect and definitely none of our phones are either.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out (and going to different repair stores and getting diagnostics and getting advice from friends who work at the Apple Store) and NONE of them could come close to helping like jbuckner's advice. All that time and some money into making it happen, I feel like i could offer the service of helping do this for people (if they live in the LA area) for a small fee. But it would have to be pretty specific of having a broken touchscreen on an iPhone...

It is not a hardware problem, it is a software issue. To all the genii out there saying this is otherwise, don't comment on what you don't know. If you can plug your lightning cord into the phone and into your mac and it recognizes the phone and is able to do the update of the phone than the data is accessible. The failure here is the failure of the software engineers to allow the phone to be remotely unlocked via the lightning cord. If you build an item that breaks regularly and you do not build in methods of access to workaround the frequently broken parts, then you are not very good at your job. And for the backup whingers, sorry all my picture were of grandma in a national park having her last wish granted and there was no cell service and no wifi - or the like.

Bad programming and design. Period.

If you've got $40 or $50 you can buy a keyboard with a connector just like your iphone charge cable (lighting connector I think they call it). I bought this one: http://www.amazon.com/Keyboard-Lightning-Connector-Retina-connector/dp/B00IQEL9N O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429235055&sr=8…

My phone screen was SMASHED! Home button didn't work, screen and digitizer broke, bad shape. But I used the keyboard to blindly enable iCloud backup, sign up for a 20GB backup plan ($0.99 per month currently), and then fully backup my iphone. Have patience, but it works and seems to replace it.

1. Plug in your keyboard to your iphone where you typically plug in your charging port.

2. Hold down your home button until Siri beeps to life (or hold the top left button on the keyboard that looks like a square) and just say "Voiceover On". Siri should respond and tell you siri is now on.

3. Press the "Lock" button on the top right corner of the keyboard. Siri says "pass code failed" as soon as I do this indicating I can now put in my passcode.

4. Type in your 4 digit unlock code on the keyboard (no need to press enter) and you should hear siri's voice over start talking about whatever app or text is highlighted on your phone.

5. Press the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate the various iphone apps. The iphone speaks whatever icon or text it's on. For example, you can scroll until you hear siri say "settings". If you have or can plug into another users iphone, this helps tremendously to visiualize what's going on.

6. Once you get the app you want press and hold down "Control" and "Option" keys and then press space bar. This is the equivalent of "clicking" on whatever item is highlighted.

Follow online instructions to enable icloud, backup to existing storage, etc.

Hope this works for you! I was very relieved to get mine backed up since I screwed up and didn't back up early.

This guy deserves a medal! I've been holding onto an old phone for two months hoping and trying different ways to access it again. Dropped phone in water, screen nor longer functioned, couldn't hear anything but the computer was able to recognize it when plugged in. I needed to get past "trust this computer" somehow even though I could not see or hear anything from my phone. I managed to plug in the screen from my replacement phone and was able to see but the touch aspects did not work, only the home button. Thanks to the jbuckner's suggestion for the external keyboard and the guide on how use it I was able to guide myself through the phone/applications and retrieve pictures and messages I was dreading to lose. For two months I couldn't find a solution till I came across this and managed to pull it off in 2 days!! Thank you so much!!

Another method is to use the Apple iPad Keyboard/Dock Model 1359 (30 pin) keyboard (available for $15 + on ebay)

with apple 30 pin to lightning adapter http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD823AM/A/lightning-to-30-pin-adapter. or you can get it as a cable http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD824AM/A/lightning-to-30-pin-adapter-02-m?afi d=p238|s2reK8Efv-dc_mtid_1870765e38482_p… I had both of these on hand and they worked perfectly to access a friend's broken phone. Best thing is it will work with any iOS device as it has the 30 pin connector for older devices and with an adapter it connects to newer devices. I almost threw the keyboard away but now it will be part of my toolkit.

Just wanted personally thank you for saving my day and helping me get my pictures backed up!!!!! I actually went to Best Buy and bought the Apple Camera Connector Kit (lightening to USB) to use with my full sized wireless keyboard that I normally use on my PC. Technically this dongle is only supposed to work with the iPAD, but it DID WORK with my iPhone 6 because the Logitech Wireless Keyboard is powered by it's own batteries!!! You could also use a wired USB full size PC keyboard to do the same thing, as long as it's using a powered USB hub, because the iPhone doesnt have enough power to run a full sized keyboard. The iPhone kept saying "unsupported device", but just ignore that because the key strokes I needed worked anyways!! Escape key works to navigate backwards through the menu, directional arrow keys work to cycle through items on screen, letters and numbers seem to work for typing. So on a PC keyboard, it's Control-Alt-Space to click on the selected item on the iPhone. I think ESC can be used to navigate backwards through the menu system as well. Another helpful hint, I was able to get my back light to come on by manually putting a little bit of pressure on the ribbon where it connects to the logic board, enough to see what I was doing anyways. My touch screen never worked though, so it was up to SIRI and using a keyboard! One caveat is that this method will not allow you to sync with iTunes because you can only have one thing plugged into the lightening connector at one time, so you can never click "Trust this Computer". iCloud is your best bet unless you can get a blue tooth keyboard to work.

Hey guys, I have an iPhone 7 and the touch screen stopped working and I wanted to backup and trust the computer and I did it in a way...!

you'll need :

- Lightning to USB Camera Adapter (or you can buy the Lightning connector keyboard which i saw on the replies http://www.amazon.com/Keyboard-Lightning-Connector-Retina-connector/dp/B00IQEL9N O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429235055&sr=8…

- USB Wireless keyboard (you don't need it if you have the Lightning keyboard)

- Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard (I used IClever)

-

1. I had Voice-Over on

2. I bought a Lightning to USB Camera Adapter to use a keyboard with a USB (any kind of keyboard, mine was Logitech)

3. I Opened the phone with the Keyboard 4 Digits

You can scroll on the apps with Right & Left Arrows and if you hold the Windows button (with four squares) and press Space it will let you search and type e.g Settings

4. You can press Up & Down arrow together for Action Button like to get inside an app and like that

5. I opened Settings went to Bluetooth Press UP&DOWN TOGETHER to turn it on

6. I had a Bluetooth Keyboard and I connected it with my phone

7. Plugged the iPhone 7 to the Laptop and the Trust | Don't Trust .. showed and used the Bluetooth keyboard to scroll and pressed UP&DOWN to TRUST IT

if you guys use Lightning to Lightning Lightning from Belkin the phone will only charge and not sync that's why you need the Bluetooth Keyboard...

It worked like a charm 🙂🙂😉😎

if you didn't understand or something just ask me!!!

POKER999 wrote:

The failure here is the failure of the software engineers to allow the phone to be remotely unlocked via the lightning cord.

That's only a 'failure' if security means nothing to you. If you backed up your phone on a regular basis, which Apple has made brain dead simple with iCloud backups, you wouldn't have a problem to begin with, other than being careless and breaking your phone, of course.

Take responsibility for your own actions.

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!

Assuming you can at least use the main iphone button.

1. Buy this keyboard:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00INUZJWI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UT F8&psc=1

2. Plug Keyboard into phone and unlock your iphone.

3. Hold down button to activate Siri and speak "Turn VoiceOver on".

4. Hold down button to activate Siri and speak "iClound Settings"

5. Use the right arrow button on the keyboard to scroll down to icloud Backup.

6. Hit the up and the down arrows on the keyboard at the same time to open the icloud backup screen.

7. Use the right arrow button on the keyboard to scroll down to backup now.

8. Hit the up and the down arrows on the keyboard at the same time to backup the phone.

I had to do these exact steps on my sons iphone. I accidentally figured out how to select an icon with hitting up and down at the same time. This was not documented anywhere that I could find.

Hope this helps someone.

Also for your step 3, if the home button is not working either, you can plug in apple headphones (or I believe any headphones with play/pause controls) and hold the play/pause button to activate Siri.

The only remaining limitation I'm seeing is that Siri must be previously enabled. Has anyone successfully enabled Siri by not touching the screen or home button?

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.

I AM DELIGHTED TO SAY I HAVE SOLVED THIS ISSUE- Watch this video (click the link)

https://youtu.be/TPhG-1qfN48

I'm so glad to prove apple wrong on this one as was given no chance but I've been able to successfully back up all the data onto a new phone!

Thank you for mentioning the Camera Connection Kit because I already had one of those. What was surprising was I was able to use a regular (non-powered) usb keyboard (Dell model number SK-8165) from an old computer. It only worked after I turned Voiceover on using Siri, as mentioned earlier, and my iPhone 5 battery was fully charged (or even around 70%). I just plugged the keyboard into the camera connection kit, and the camera connection kit into the lighting port on the iPhone 5. I was able to turn on iCloud and backup my data. I'm so grateful!

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?