If you regularly back up your iPhone data to a Mac, you might find your space is limited. Although Apple doesn’t facilitate straightforward backups to external hard drives, it’s possible. This guide shows you how to back up using iOS 13 and macOS Catalina or later.

How to Find Your Current Backup on MacOS

Because of the complexity, we’ve broken down what needs to be done before moving your iPhone backup to an external hard drive into multiple steps.

First, you need to locate where the backup is stored on your Mac. It’s easy to find.

1. Connect your phone to your computer with a USB cable so it appears in your Finder.

2. Choose your iPhone. It will appear under the Locations heading in the Finder.

   Use iTunes to find your iPhone if you’re using a macOS version older than macOS Catalina.

3. Click Manage Backups.

4. Long-press the Control key and click the backup name you want. It may be named “Backup” or it may be a long string of letters and numbers.

5. In the drop-down menu, select Show in Finder.

6. You’ve successfully tracked down the backup.

How to Move iPhone Backup to an External Hard Drive

Now you’ve found your backup, you need to move it to your external hard drive. This step is pretty simple. 

1. Go to the Finder window that displays your iOS backup.

2. Select the Backup folder. 

   It will either be called Backup or consist of a series of numbers and letters.

3. Drag it to the external hard drive under Locations in the Finder sidebar.

   You might need to enter your administrator password to complete this step.

4. Rename the iOS backup folder on the external hard drive to ios_backup.

5. Switch back to the original finder window and rename the old backup to old_backup.

Can You Change Where Your Mac Saves iPhone Backups?

If you want, you can permanently change where the Mac saves your iPhone backups. The process involves being comfortable changing a few background settings on your Mac via the Terminal command. If you’ve never dealt with Terminal before, it can be intimidating as it’s powerful and not exactly user-friendly. 

Changing Mac’s location for iPhone backups is the trickiest part of this process. To always have your iPhone back up to an external hard drive, you need to create a symlink so that your Mac knows where to look for future backups.

Changing the backup location is straightforward if you follow these steps, but it does require attention to detail. You’ll need to adjust some permissions on your Mac first.

Update Permissions on Your Mac

Here’s how to adjust those permissions.

1. Click the Apple icon.

2. Select System Preferences.

3. Click Security & Privacy.

4. Select Privacy.

5. Click the Lock to make changes.

6. Enter your admin password.

7. Select Full Disk Access.

8. Click the plus (+) sign.

9. Scroll through your applications and select Terminal.

Change iPhone Backup Locations

Now you’ve completed that step, here’s how to change iPhone backup location on Mac.

1. Open Terminal.

2. Paste this code, ensuring you change the relevant parts to the name of your external hard drive.

    ln -s /Volumes/**yourexternalharddrivename**/ios_backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/

3. Select Return.

4. Close Terminal.

5. You’ve now made a symlink between the new folder and the old folder that contains your backup. 

How Do I Know the New iPhone Backup Worked?

When handling backups, it’s important to ensure you’ve completed everything correctly. To verify, select Back Up Now from the iPhone location in Finder. Once complete, open the iOS Backup folder on your external hard drive and confirm the Date Modified has updated to the current time.

How to Disable Automatic Backups

The downside to having a backup on your external hard drive is if you don’t always have the external hard drive plugged in, you can have issues. Here’s how to disable automatic backups so you only back up your iPhone when you want to do it.

1. Open Finder.

2. In the Locations section, select your iPhone.

3. Uncheck the Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected box.

4. Remember to perform manual backups regularly.