[2025 Updated] 2 Ways to Backup iPhone Without Photos Easily

Why need to backup iPhone without photos?

For most iPhone users, backing up their phone data is an important topic. When you have too many photos on your phone, many people may want to back up their iPhone data but exclude photos. 

Can this operation be done? Absolutely! If you want to back up your iPhone's data to the cloud without including photos, iCloud is available. However, for Windows users who want to back up data to their computer, iTunes only supports full data backups. In this case, you can use FoneTool to complete this process.

How to backup iPhone without photos

From this part, you can know how to selectively back up iPhone using iCloud or FoneTool. However, iCloud only provides 5 GB of free storage, which can be insufficient for users with extensive data on their iPhones.

In such cases, FoneTool allows you to selectively back up your iPhone without photos or create a complete backup of all iPhone data, with no size limitations.

Create an iPhone backup without photos using iCloud

If you don’t know how to back up everything except photos, iCloud can help you a lot.

Step 1. Turn the iCloud backup of Photos off: Go to Settings on your iPhone > Tap on your Apple ID at the top of the screen > iCloud > Storage > iCloud > Manage Storage > Backups > This Device > Choose Data To Backup > Photos.

Step 2. Back to the main iCloud settings page and choose iCloud Backup > Tap on Back Up Now to create the iPhone backup without photos.

The easiest way to backup iPhone without photos

With iCloud, you can back up all things to cloud without photos. But the storage limitation can be very troublesome for free users. Furthermore, if you can’t ensure that your network connection is stable, the backup process will be much slower.

With FoneTool, an all-in-one iPhone data management app, you can easily create selective backups for your iPhone on PC, offering a more convenient alternative to iCloud.

Safe USB connection: FoneTool only relies on a USB connection. So the wake and unstable network connection will not affect the transfer process. What’s more, your data will never be revealed.
No Apple ID restriction: Apple's services typically restrict the transfer between different Apple IDs. But you can easily restore your iPhone backup to another iOS device with different Apple IDs.
Super-fast transfer speed: The transfer speed, which far exceeds that of other software in the same industry, allows you to easily back up all important data on your iPhone to PC.
No backup size limit: FoneTool does not impose restrictions on the size of backups. The amount of data you can back up only depends on the storage capacity of the target device (PC, iPad, external drive, etc.).
Wide compatibility: FoneTool works well with various iOS devices including iPhone 4 to iPhone 16, iPad and iPod Touch, as well as the latest iOS 18. So it rarely encounters interruptions during operation.

Now you can get FoneTool on your Windows PC and learn how to backup iPhone without photos to PC.

Step 1. Launch FoneTool and connect your iPhone to your PC using a USB cable.

Step 2. Choose Phone Backup > Selective Backup > Click Get Started.

Step 3. You can check Music, Videos, Contacts, and Messages to choose the data > Click Backup Storage Path to choose a backup storage location > Click Start Backup to confirm the choice.

Whether you need to restore a backup to a new phone or intend to restore it on your current device in the future, you can go to My Backups and click Restore to get your backup.

Bonus: How to fully backup iPhone with the professional tool

When it comes to fully backing up an iPhone, most Windows users will use iTunes to make it. However, due to the instability of iTunes software, it often encounters various errors during usage, such as iTunes error 3004 when restoring iPhone. This can interrupt your usage process or cause the inability to back up your iPhone data.

So why not use the more stable app - FoneTool to fully back up your iPhone? It not only offers faster transfer speeds but also enables bidirectional data transfer between your iPhone and computer. And iTunes only allows one-way synchronization for users.

If you are considering fully backing up your iPhone data with FoneTool, you can follow the detailed steps to learn how to back up iPhone on Windows 11/10/8/7.

Step 1. Launch FoneTool > Go to Phone Backup > Full Back > Get Started.

Step 2. Check Enable Backup Encryption to encrypt your private data if you need > Choose a storage path to store your backup on PC > Click Start Backup to begin the task.

Conclusion

That’s all about how to backup iPhone without photos. You can use iCloud to back up all things except for photos on iPhone. Or use FoneTool to selectively back up videos, music, contacts, messages. If necessary, you can also use FoneTool to perform a full backup of your iPhone or backup iPhone to external hard drive Windows.