How to Back Up Your Phone (Android and iPhone)

Most people only think about backups after their phone falls in water or gets stolen. By then it's too late. Setting up a backup takes about ten minutes, and after that it mostly runs by itself.

What to back up

• Photos and videos
• Contacts
• WhatsApp chats
• Important documents and notes

Android

Turn on Google backup

1. Open Settings.
2. Search for Backup (the menu name differs a little by brand).
3. Turn on Backup by Google One and tap Back up now.

This saves your contacts, app data, call history, texts and settings to your Google account.

Back up photos

Install or open Google Photos, tap your profile picture and turn on Backup. Choose whether to back up on Wi-Fi only to save your data.

iPhone

Turn on iCloud Backup

1. Open Settings and tap your name at the top.
2. Tap iCloud, then iCloud Backup.
3. Turn it on and tap Back Up Now.

Back up photos

In the same iCloud menu, tap Photos and turn on iCloud Photos. You can also use Google Photos on iPhone.

WhatsApp chats

WhatsApp keeps its own backup:

1. Open WhatsApp and go to Settings, then Chats, then Chat backup.
2. Tap Back up and set it to back up daily or weekly.

On Android this saves to Google Drive. On iPhone it saves to iCloud.

Watch your storage

Free cloud storage is limited (Google gives 15 GB shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos, and iCloud gives 5 GB). If you run out, backups quietly stop. You can:

• Delete blurry photos, duplicates and big videos you don't need
• Copy photos to a computer or external drive now and again
• Pay for a small storage plan if you have lots of photos

Test it once

Check that your photos appear on photos.google.com or icloud.com from a computer. If you can see them there, you're covered.