How to selectively browse & selectively restore an iphone backup

How to selectively browse & selectively restore an iphone backup...

I now, many months after the "loss" event, have a directory hierarchy on a usb stick

that is an iTunes backup of an old (damaged) iphone that was 64G, the old phone cannot be

repaired. (The new phone is 16G & backed up to iCloud & my Mac - hopefully)

The hierarchy is named at the top with a 40 digit hexadecimal number that is obviously unique to the iphone.

In ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ on the Mac I used to back the phone up on I have a

number of similarly named, incl. one the same, directory hierarchies.

The phone had not been backed up for a number of weeks (I was away) & was not backed up to iCloud at the time.

So I've "lost" some photos, the messages/what's-app/ conversations & photos that I'd like to recover from this

hierarchy.

Obviously the files are there, so... How can I safely recover only what I want?

iPhone 5s, iOS 10.3.3, may have been os at time of loss

Posted on Jan 26, 2018 5:21 PM

Similar questions

3 replies

Jan 26, 2018 5:27 PM in response to grumpyoldman2

Apple offers no direct way to access the backup files for selected content. Restoring a backup is all or nothing.

If you need to access the backup to extract specific things, you'll need a third party Apo to do that, and manually add the content onto the new iPhone.

One such application is iExplorer:

Browse iPhone Backups and Access Files · iExplorer

There are others you can find by searching on Google.com

Jan 28, 2018 3:12 PM in response to grumpyoldman2

No, not Internet Explorer. Just iExplorer, has nothing to do with Microsoft. It’s a third party tool to access the backup.

Jan 26, 2018 6:58 PM in response to Phil0124

Thanks for the prompt response.

That's very sad & rather inconvenient, in fact ridiculously so I think.

You mean Internet Explorer??? hopefully not - I'd not touch Microsoft products with a 10 foot disinfected barge pole ;-)

Luckily it's not - thanks I'll give it a try, but Apple-iTunes really should be able to do this sort of thing

easily.

I've not yet worked out if there's a cost to it.

Cheers

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

How to selectively browse & selectively restore an iphone backup