FAQ: How Do You Back up / Recover Your iPhone and iPad without iTunes?

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Apple has announced that iTunes will soon see its end. With the announcement of macOS Catalina, iTunes will be replaced by Music, TV, and Podcast apps.

Starting in 2001, iTunes was designed to manage all of your music. And two years later, the iTunes Store was announced, giving users the ability to purchase music directly from Apple. As time went on, iTunes started to become a cluster. From managing your iOS devices to listening to Podcasts, and renting movies, iTunes was seemingly taking on more than it could handle.

Now in the era of streaming music, iCloud backups, and Apple’s upcoming TV app, the question started to float around.. Do we need iTunes anymore? Apple has made the answer clear; no we don’t.

They’ve broken up iTunes into three different apps. Music, Podcasts and Apple TV. So, how do we manage our iOS devices? How do we back up our devices? How do we restore them?

How to Use Finder to Manage Your iPhone and iPad

Yes, Finder. Apple didn’t change the interface when it comes to managing your devices, it’s just the location. So let’s take a look into what you need to do to continue to use your Mac to manage your iOS devices.

1. Plug your iPhone or iPad into your Mac.
2. Open Finder on your Mac. If you can’t find Finder, it’s the icon that looks like two faces in a square (shown above).
3. Scroll down on the Finder sidebar to Locations.
4. Click on your device listed; if you don’t see any devices listed click “show” next to locations.
5. From here you will see a page that’s similar to what you would see in iTunes.
6. From here you can choose to back up, restore, or sync your iOS device, just like using iTunes in the past.

What About Windows?

While Apple announced its plans for iTunes on the Mac during WWDC, they didn’t make mention of its intentions for Windows.

After the conference was over, Apple made it clear that iTunes for Windows is staying put for now.

Windows users will see no difference in how they manage their digital content or manage their iOS devices.

It wasn’t clear what new features Apple intends to add to Windows in the future, but it is clear that for the time being, nothing is being removed.