Recover photos with iMazing

We’ve talked about the importance of backing up iOS devices you’re actively using. It’s also worth retaining backups of old devices, as apps can be used to extract data from them. If you once had an iPhone that housed a sole copy of a snap and you still have its iTunes backup, chances are you can use iMazing (£34.99, imazing.com) to recover the photo.

Open iMazing and it’ll locate iOS backups stored on your Mac. Select a backup from the sidebar, then Photos. You may need to type in your admin password for the app to access your keychain and your data.

iMazing will then load thumbnails for images it finds (which can take several minutes). When it’s done, photos and videos found in the backup will be browsable in a manner similar to Finder, and you can recover items by dragging and dropping them into a folder in a Finder window.