How to Find an iPhone Backup on PC

Written by Travis Boylls

Last Updated: March 29, 2019 Tested

This wikiHow teaches you how to find an iPhone or iPad backup on your computer. iPhone and iPad can be backed up to a Mac or PC using iTunes. The backup folder can be found in a folder labeled Apple or Apple Computer depending on how you installed iTunes on your Windows computer.

Steps

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On Windows 10, Search is the button with the circle or magnifying glass next to the Start button. On Windows 8, it's the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner.
If you downloaded iTunes from the Apple website, type "%appdata% into Windows search. If you downloaded iTunes from the Microsoft store, type "%USERPROFILE%" instead.^{[1]
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This opens your the selected folder on your computer.
This opens the folder. Folders are listed in alphabetical order by default.
5
Double-click the "MobileSync" folder. It's in the "Apple" or "Apple Computer" folder.
- If you don't see a MobileSync folder, then no backups are saved on your computer.
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Double-click the "Backup" folder. Within the Backup folder, there is a folder(s) that contains a long stream of numbers and letters. This is the iPhone or iPad backup. Use the date under "Date Modified" to see when the backup was created.
- Do NOT modify, edit, delete, rename, or extract any of the files or folders within the Backup folder. This may ruin the backup. If you need to copy a Backup, copy the entire Backup folder.
- On PC, the Backup folder is found at C:\\Users\*username*\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
- On Mac, the Backup folder is found at ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

Community Q&A

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Question

Once I locate the backup, how do I view it? My PC is asking how I want to open it, but I don't know which application to use because I do not know what the file contains. What do I do?

Minorite

Community Answer

There's no way you can open the backup with Explorer or using iTunes, only with third-party backup browsers. iMazing is good (at least I didn't have any issues with it for more than a year), but there are a lot of backup viewers on the web. Just be careful with free apps.

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