iBackup Extractor Quick Start Tutorial

Copying Photos from your iPhone, iPod, or iPad backups to your Computer

To get started, let's take a look at a common use case for iBackup Extractor: accessing photos in a backup, and saving them to your computer.

1. Download and Install iBackup Extractor.
2. Start up iBackup Extractor by double-clicking the iBackup Extractor icon on your desktop or from your applications folder.
3. Select a backup from the backup selection home page of the program.
4. Click the "Backup Media" (PC) or "Images" (Mac) tab.
5. Select the photos you would like to extract from the backup and click "Save to PC" (Windows) or "Copy to Mac".
6. Choose where to save your photos to on your computer and click OK.

iBackup Extractor
for Windows

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(PC)

iBackup Extractor
for Mac

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(Mac)

Selecting which backup will be accessed

When you launch iBackup Extractor, you will be presented with a list of existing device backups which have been detected on your computer. To access a backup, select it from the list, and hit "Explore" (Windows) or "Browse Selected Backup" (Mac).

iBackup Extractor can access backups created by iTunes (or Finder if you are using macOS Catalina or higher). It cannot, however, access backups stored in iCloud.

If an existing backup has not been detected in the default location, you can tell iBackup Extractor to look in a different location on your computer by using the "Change Backup Directory..." (PC) or "Change Location" (Mac) button.

If your iPhone backup was encrypted when you created it, you will need to enter your backup encryption password in iBackup Extractor to view the contents of the backup. iBackup Extractor uses this password locally and securely on your computer for this purpose so that you can open your iOS device backup - this password is not saved or shared.

After this is done, you can start browsing through your backed-up data and extract it to your PC/Mac. Using the feature selection menu on the left of the program, you can browse through your Calendars, Contacts, Notes, Messages, Photos, Call Logs and more, and extract these files to your computer.

Creating a new backup of your iOS device

If iBackup Extractor does not find any iPhone backups on your computer and you still have access to your device, you can create a new backup as detailed in our guide on how to create a backup of your device in iTunes or using Finder.

You can also choose to create an unencrypted backup on your computer, so that a password is not needed when using iBackup Extractor as detailed in our article on how to remove encryption from iPhone or an iOS Backup.