iCloud is a great cloud service to back up iPhone data without loss.

However, many users get a little crazy when they restore from iCloud stuck on the time remaining estimating interface.

How long does it take to back up an iPhone to iCloud?

We can’t tell an exact time because it varies from user, based on Internet connection, iPhone data file size, and other settings on the iPhone.

No worry, we will explain it in detail and show the 5 free tips to speed up iCloud backup.

Part 1: How Long Does It Take to Back up an iPhone to iCloud

How long does it take to back up to iCloud?

The estimating time of iCloud backup mainly depends on the iPhone data size and the Internet connection. Surely, other settings on the iPhone will affect the result.

We tested this issue on an iPhone 14 using a stable 20 Mbps internet connection. It took approximately 12 hours to back up 100 GB of data on the device, with the following details:

• Photos and videos in your Camera Roll.
• Device settings such as Phone Favorites, Wallpaper, Mail, Contacts, and Calendar accounts.
• App data.
• Home screen and app organization.
• iMessage, text (SMS), and MMS messages.
• Ringtones.
• Visual Voicemail.

And when we restore from iCloud, the estimated time remaining tends to be inaccurate due to the way iPhone downloads different data types at different speeds. It takes around 3 hours to restore the core data, while completing the full restoration takes 6 hours, with a download speed of 100 Mbps for your reference.

Wow, so long.

And the time will vary due to different network conditions, device status, and the types of data being backed up.

For those who bear 2 days for iCloud backup and the estimated time remaining forever, it may be a disaster.

So here comes a problem - is there a way to speed up iCloud backup?

Yes, exactly.

Move on to the next part to make a slow iCloud backup faster.

Part 2: How to Speed Up iCloud Backup Process

Before exploring how to shorten the iCloud backup time, let’s figure out what will affect the iCloud backup speed during the backup process. Below we list some important factors:

• Network speed and stability
• Data size
• iPhone available storage
• Background running apps
• iCloud server

After learning the factors that can affect the backup speed, let’s see how to take targeted measures to speed up the entire iCloud backup process.

Connect to a well-performing Internet

One of the influencing factors is the speed of your Internet, because iCloud backup happens with is Wi-Fi connected. Therefore, the more files you want to back up to iCloud and the slower your Wi-Fi speed is, the longer it takes to back up to iCloud.

Just follow the steps below to get the Internet settings to improve iCloud backup speed.

Step 1. First, check if there are too many wireless devices connected to your Wi-Fi network. If so, turn off these unnecessary ones.

Step 2. You can also turn off the working applications that are using the Internet on your iOS device.

Step 3. Try to reset the network on iPhone, and use it again to get a fast Internet connection.

Step 4. If it is still slow, you can change to another reliable and fast Internet connection for iCloud backup.

Step 5. What's more, in case you don't have a fast Internet connection, you can contact your ISP for backup.

Disable large files Backup

Most of the time, photos, videos, audio and apps are large in size. They will take up the main space on your iPhone. As a result, it will take a long time if you back up all these files to iCloud. You need to cancel the backup of these large files by following these steps. Take disabling the iCloud backup of photos for example.

Step 1. Go to the Settings of iPhone, and then click on iCloud.

Step 2. Then, find the Photos button and click on it.

Step 3. In the interface, disable the uploading of burst images or other media files.

If you do want to back up iPhone photos, but they do take up a large file size, just try to transfer iPhone photos to PC directly without iCloud.

Backup with iTunes

In most cases, photos and videos take up a large space on your iPhone, so it will take a long time to back them up to iCloud. However, photos and videos are important memories to you, and you want to store them well. Then you can choose to back them up to your computer with iTunes, instead of iCloud.

Here is the specific guide:

Step 1. Download and install iTunes on your computer. Connect your iPhone to the computer, and iTunes will open automatically.

Step 2. Click on Device, and then choose Summary under the Settings section. Then check This computer and tab on Backup Now.

Step 3. When the process of backup is finished, you can check your backup by clicking on iTunes, selecting Preferences, and choosing Devices.

Then, you are able to find iTunes backup on the computer here to view the details.

Clean up iPhone

The last solution to speed up iCloud backup is to clean up your device. It is because if your device is clustered and there is a lot of data in your device, the process of iCloud backup will take more time. So, how to clean up the storage of your device? There are the instructions.

Step 1. Visit your iPhone's Settings and click on the General button.

Step 2. Select the option of iPhone Storage, and then you can see the various apps and data types that have consumed your device's storage.

Step 3. Choose the apps that you want to clear and then delete the caches of these apps, or simply uninstall these useless apps.

Back up more often

What you don't know is that iCloud adopts an incremental backup mechanism. The first backup requires a large amount of data, but the following backup will only back up the newly added or changed content.

Therefore, if you frequently back up, the data that needs to be uploaded each time you back up will be significantly reduced, and the backup time will also be shortened accordingly, making the backup process smoother and more efficient.

Part 3: A Faster Way to Back up Your iPhone Data

Apart from the 5 solutions we offered above to speed up iCloud backup, there is the best way to back up your iPhone. Here we will use Apeaksoft iOS Data Backup & Restore.

It is software that lets you selectively back up and restore whatever you want from iOS devices or backup. Moreover, it gives you the option to encrypt your backups freely and safely.

Step 1. Download iOS Data Backup & Restore and launch it on your computer. Click on the iOS Data Backup button on the interface.

Step 2. Connect your device to your computer, and the program will detect your iOS device automatically.

Step 3. Select the files that you want to back up and then click on the Next button to start the process of backup.

Step 4. When the backup process finishes, you can preview all the backup contents by clicking on the Restore iOS Data button.

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