Photos are the thing people most often lose when a phone is dropped, stolen or simply stops working. The good news is that both iPhone and Android can back up your photos automatically. The catch is that it has to actually be turned on, and it has to have room to work.
On an iPhone: iCloud Photos
- Open Settings and tap your name at the top.
- Tap iCloud, then Photos.
- Turn on the option to sync this iPhone (it may be labeled iCloud Photos, depending on your version).
- Check how much iCloud storage you have. The free amount is small, and a full iCloud account quietly stops backing up. You may need to add storage.
On Android: Google Photos
- Open the Google Photos app and sign in with your Google account.
- Tap your profile picture in the corner and look for Backup.
- Turn backup on and choose the Google account it should use.
- Check your Google storage, which is shared with Gmail and Google Drive.
Check that it is actually on
This is the step most people skip. Backup can look turned on but be paused because storage is full, the battery saver is on, or the phone has not been on Wi-Fi.
- Look at the backup status in iCloud Photos or Google Photos. It should say it is up to date, not paused or waiting.
- Open the photos website on a computer (icloud.com or photos.google.com) and confirm last week's pictures are there.
- Leave the phone plugged in and on Wi-Fi overnight now and then so it can catch up.
Keep a second copy
A cloud backup is one copy. For photos you truly cannot replace, keep a second copy somewhere else: download them a few times a year to a computer or an external drive, or use a second service. If one copy is lost or your account is locked, you still have the other.
One important note about syncing
Photo sync is not the same as a separate backup. If you delete a photo from your phone, it is usually deleted from the synced cloud too, after a short recovery period. That is another reason the second copy matters.
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