First iPhone XS backup

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First iPhone XS backup

Dear all,

I have noticed that the first backup completed via iTunes of my new iPhone XS is about 40GB large.

Normally that backup doesn't store that many things, especially if I make estensive use of iCloud Drive.

Also, of all the apps I have installed it should only remember what was installed and not make a true copy of the app itself, right?

Could it be because I asked the iPhone to store all the Photo Library on the device?

If and when the device is backed up on iCloud Drive, will it also take 40GB there?

If so, how can I prevent that?

How can I make it so that the next iTunes backup doesn't occupy almost all the remaining space on my MacBook Pro's SSD?

Thank you so much

iPhone XS, iOS 12.1, 256Gb, Gold

Posted on Nov 17, 2018 8:19 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

SJobs84

Level 3

527 points

Nov 18, 2018 2:55 PM in response to NotationMaster

The simple way to think about it is that the iCloud backup backups data that isn't already on iCloud. An iTunes backup backups almost everything on the phone.

Check out the link below to learn how iCloud and iTunes backups or different. Long story short, you can generally always expect an iTunes backup to be bigger than your iCloud backup if you use iCloud for things like Contact, Calendar, etc.

So, for example, I'm using 11.7 GB of space on iCloud in total right now but only 3.7 GB of that is "backup data".

About backups for iOS devices - Apple Support

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First iPhone XS backup

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