Apple Discontinues iCloud Backup Support for iOS 8 and Earlier

If you’re using an iPhone with iOS 8 or earlier, you’ll need to upgrade or lose access to your iCloud backups. Apple is advising customers that it will soon not only be disabling new iCloud backups from these older devices but also deleting any existing backups in the process.

In a new support document found by 9to5Mac, Apple notes that iCloud backups will be cut off a month from now unless users update their devices to iOS 9 or later:

Starting December 18, 2024, device backups will require iOS 9 or later. This is to align more closely with our published minimum software requirements. Until this date, you’ll be able to use the service as normal. Afterward, your backup data will be deleted unless you update to iOS 9 or later.

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Technically, folks using iCloud services on devices running older versions of iOS have been living on borrowed time anyway. As Apple’s iCloud system requirements article notes, iOS 10 has been the minimum version needed to use iCloud for a while now. While the footnotes to that article suggest that some features like Family Sharing and two-factor authentication will work with iOS 9, there’s no mention of iOS 8 or earlier versions anywhere on the page.

To use iCloud you need at least iOS 10 on iPhone 5, iPod touch (6th generation), iPad (4th generation) or iPad mini 2; watchOS 3 on an Apple Watch; macOS Sierra 10.12 on a Mac; tvOS 4 on an Apple TV (4th generation); or visionOS 1 on an Apple Vision Pro.

While some may look at this and claim Apple is forcing folks to upgrade, it’s important to note that the last iPhone model that couldn’t be updated beyond iOS 8 was the original iPhone 4, released in 2010, which stopped at iOS 7. Even the 2011 iPhone 4S supports iOS 9, the 2012 iPhone 5 can be updated to iOS 10, and the 2013 iPhone 5s can make it all the way to iOS 12.

The same is even more true for the iPad, where there isn’t a single model stuck on iOS 8 (the iPhone and iPad both ran iOS in those days; iPadOS didn’t come along until 2019). The original first-generation iPad from 2010 didn’t go beyond iOS 5, but the later 2011 and 2012 models could all be updated to at least iOS 9, and every model released in the past decade is good to at least iOS 12, and a surprising number of older models can be updated to iPadOS 15.

Nevertheless, if you still have an older iPhone or iPad that you really need to back up, it’s worth mentioning that Apple has only discontinued iCloud backups; you can still back up your devices to your Mac or PC. However, if you have an iPhone or iPad that can’t be updated to at least iOS 9, it’s probably a good time to buy a new one. Fourteen years is a pretty good run for any modern electronic device.