You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

📰 Newsroom Update

Billie Eilish is Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2024. Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

nueve_leon Author

Level 1

66 points

Skip Backing Up step when synching via Ligntning cable

I sync my music the old school way by connecting my iPhone 12 mini to my late 2013 Intel iMac running Catalina using a Lightning Cable.

Every time I do this the a VERY VERY long "Backing Up" process is initiated.

I really want to skip this "Backing Up" step and simply sync new music I have added to the Music app on the iMac without backing up the whole iPhone.

Is this possible?

After all I've got all my other important data Synched to iCloud - just not my personal music because I've got a lot of personal recordings that I fear I will lose if I synch those to the cloud.

iPhone 12

Posted on Apr 25, 2023 8:52 AM

Top-ranking reply

javaliga

Level 10

119,869 points

Posted on Apr 25, 2023 10:02 AM

See the figures in steps 6 & 7 of:

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with your Mac - Apple Support

I believe if you select the "Backup you most important data on your iPhone to iCloud" by default then it will not backup the iPhone to the Mac when you use the cable until you select "Backup all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac" and then press the "Back Up Now" button. Then select the "Backup you most important data on your iPhone to iCloud" again when you close the Finder.

View in context

Skip Backing Up step when synching via Ligntning cable

Similar questions