Regularly backing up your iOS device to your Mac is a good way to ensure you do not lose any of your essential photos or videos you capture with the device. There is a decent chance that your Mac storage drive has more than one backup; one is current and the rest are outdated. These old backups have no importance in your storage further, and they waste your Mac’s internal space. You have to remove these backup folders to free-up the storage space and speed up Mac of yours.
Deleting old iOS backup from Mac is safe or not?
Yes, it is 100% safe; you can delete your old iOS backup from your Mac without any hesitation. Deletion of these backups will recover your GBs of irrelevantly acquired space of your SSDs, and further it also provides a optimization to the Mac. Due to this, an SSD’s life is increased as more free space and less wear and tear on the NAND cells are created. However, you have to back up your Mac first via Time Machine before deleting any old iOS backups to prevent accidental data loss.
How can you delete old iOS backup on Mac?
If you want to remove outdated iOS backups stored on your Mac, you can use various methods. However, you need to know where macOS stores all your iOS backups on your Mac. To delete old iOS backups, you can use the Finder, Storage Management app, or go to the location and delete them for good. You can also use Mac Optimizer Pro, if you do not have much time to chichi each and every setting of your Mac. This third-app easily clean up Mac of yours very easily within just few clicks.
But, first focus on manual steps to delete iOS backups from the Mac:
1. Use Finder to Delete ‘Old iOS Backups’ on Mac
With macOS Catalina, you will no longer be able to manage your iOS backups with iTunes, which aggregates your movies, music, TV shows, and podcasts into one place. However, iTunes is separated into three apps in the latest versions of macOS Catalina and Big Sur ;Music, TV, and Podcasts. Apple’s Finder application lets you find and delete old iOS backups on Mac, if you are used to iTunes-style backup management.
Steps to eliminate outdated iOS backups with Finder are as follows:
- Connect your iOS device to with your Mac gadgets (MacBook Pro, MacBook Air,etc).
- Then, launch Finder from Dock, and select your iOS device in the sidebar.
- Go to right panel, click the Manage Backups button. After that a dialog window opens.
- Select the old iOS backups in that dialogue window, and then click on the Delete Backup button.
- Go to message box, click on Delete button to confirm. After that, macOS deletes the backup.
- Click on OK button to set the preferences.
- Then, Click the Speed Up tab, and select the boot volume from sidebar.
- Afterwards, Click the Scan button. The tool automatically put the scanned files on the right
- Wait, and select only old iOS backup files, then click on CleanUp Now option to delete them.
2. Delete old ‘iOS backup folders’ on Mac with Finder
- If you want to access the individual iOS backup folders, you can do so using Finder. The steps to do this process are as follows:
- Open Finder, then click on Go > Go to Folder from the menu bar.
- Type ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/MobileSync/Backup/, in the text box, then click Go.
- Search for old iOS backup folder by using a timestamp, because backup folders have no readability.
- Select old backup folder, and click on Move to Trash to delete it.
- Secondary-click on the Trash icon from Dock, and click on Empty Trash to free up storage space.
These useful steps assist the users to clean up Mac of theirs, in a proper way. It also provides complete optimization to the Mac, which further provides speed to the operating system.
3. With storage management app delete irrelevant iOS backups from the Mac
Before macOS Mojave, the uses of Finder are to locate and manage iOS backup folders. However, after Mojave and the latest macOS versions, a new iOS backup management app from Apple lets you see all your iOS backups, so you can manage them easily.
Steps to remove old iOS backups with Storage Management app are here:
- First, Click on Apple menu > About This Mac, then go to the Storage tab on the top.
- Check the space acquired by iOS files on your Mac storage.
- Click on Manage button from the right, to open Storage Management app opens.
- Select the iOS files option from the sidebar. Then, search for iOS backups from the right.
- Select old iOS backup files, and click the Delete button.
- Then, a dialog window appears; click on Delete button to verify the delete command.
All in all, by following these steps you can easily get rid of from redundant iOS backups and folders. In case you do not have the time and mood to do these manual steps, then download Mac Optimizer Pro for easy optimization and cleaning of unnecessary data, just in some clicks.
