Just because it’s in ‘the cloud’ doesn’t mean it’s backed up
With a certain feature, messages will not be recoverable if they’re deleted — even if you try to find them on another device
Apple touts its iCloud as a way to seamlessly back up your data, making it available on all your iOS and macOS devices. But as I discovered in a horrible way, not all features of iCloud are protective. One variant of it makes it too easy to remove something important forever.
Earlier this month, I was going through my Messages threads on my iPhone and removing detritus — you know, notifications of old package deliveries, twofactor authentication codes, etc. I thought I was removing something trivial when I discovered to my dismay that I had inadvertently nuked the entire Messages thread with my lovely wife.
Those exchanges, which went back years, are a snapshot of our day-to-day lives and are our most simple yet intimate connections — photos, cat videos, phone numbers, the little in-jokes all couples have and much more. With one accidental flick of my finger on Valentine’s Day eve, they were gone.
Not only were they missing from my iPhone, but they also vanished from every other active Apple device I own.
“Wait,” you might say.
With Apple’s Messages in iCloud feature, if you delete messages from one device, they’re gone from all the others.
“Didn’t you have a backup? Don’t you use iCloud? And back up your iPhone every Saturday to your Mac?”
Why, yes. Yes, I do. But none of that saved me because I had a feature called Messages in iCloud turned on. Because of that, there is no backup capability for Messages. It’s designed to synchronize messages among devices, so when you delete something in one device, it’s gone everywhere.
I posted about my misfortune on Twitter, and the reactions I got — including lots of suggestions to restore from iCloud backup — indicated that most people
didn’t understand what Message in iCloud actually does. When you turn on the feature, your message threads are no longer backed up, either in iCloud backups or in those you can do on a PC or Mac via iTunes (or Finder in macOS 10.15 or later).
Apple is relatively upfront about this — and I qualify that because, while this fact does appear in a “what iCloud backups include” support document, it’s as a footnote.
Hoping there was some secret voodoo maneuver that would save my bacon, I called Apple tech support. A nice rep named Casey confirmed the worst — my mistake was irreversible.
But it turns out I had one Apple device that still held that conversation: my iPad. Its battery ran down and was not connected to the internet when I deleted the thread. I plugged it into a charger, and when it got enough juice to power on, I turned off WiFi, then turned off Messages in Cloud.
Sure enough, the thread with my wife was still on the iPad. The oldest message I’ve found is from January 2018 — not complete, but better than nothing. (Here’s how to turn it on or off.)
Messages in iCloud is a great feature, letting you see all your messages on all your devices, regardless of where they initiated. But the downside is that when you delete something in one place, it’s gone everywhere.
Oh, and Apple: You need a “Deleted” folder for Messages, just as you have one for Photos, which works the same way in iCloud. There would be less horror and pain in the world.
(This story originally appeared in Silverman’s Release Notes newsletter. Sign up at houstonchronicle.com/ releasenotes.