Where are iPhone backups stored on Mac? Can you delete them?

Where it is

What it is

When you back up an iPhone or iPad to your Mac using Finder, the backup is stored in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup. Each device gets a folder with a long identifier for a name, containing the device's data in a form only the restore process can read.

Backups are easy to forget. A backup from a phone you sold years ago, or one made once before an iOS update, stays on your Mac until you remove it.

This folder is unrelated to iCloud Backup. If your devices back up to iCloud, nothing is stored here unless you also made a local backup at some point.

How big it gets

Each backup can be anywhere from a few GB to more than a hundred GB, roughly following how much is on the device.

How to clear it by hand

1. Connect the iPhone or iPad to your Mac and select it in the Finder sidebar.
2. On the General tab, click Manage Backups. You see every local backup with its device name and date.
3. Select a backup you no longer need and click Delete Backup. Keep the most recent backup of any device you still use, unless it also backs up to iCloud.
4. Without a device to hand, open System Settings > General > Storage and look for iOS Files, which lists the same backups.

What happens afterwards

A deleted backup cannot be used to restore a device. Nothing changes on the iPhone or iPad itself, and you can make a fresh backup at any time by connecting it and choosing Back Up Now.

How Diskzy handles it

Diskzy shows backups as their own named part under System Data, with their size, so you can see how much they take before deciding in Finder which to remove.

Related guides

• Application Support~/Library/Application Support
• Time Machine local snapshots(APFS snapshots, not a folder)
• Trash~/.Trash