Several users who have updated to iOS 9 are experiencing problems with iCloud backup, specifically the iOS 9 iCloud backup not working. Users are saying that they are unable to back up even though they have enough iCloud storage available. Furthermore, iCloud latest backup status indicates “never” even though iCloud backup was successfully performed before the iOS 9 upgrade.
Reset your device by holding down the home button and the sleep/wake button together until the screen goes black and you see the Apple logo.
(Before doing this, you may want to backup your device using iTunes). Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage > Select your device that you are unable to backup. Then wait for a few seconds (Backup Options should be loaded completely before you proceed – no spinning wheel). Then Tap Delete Backup. After your backup is deleted, tap Settings > iCloud > Back up and turn iCloud Backup off then on again. Then tap Back Up Now.
Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.
Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.
In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.
I have an iPhone 6S with iOS 9.0.2 and Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage has been spinning since January… iTunes won’t even recognize my iPhone anymore. I’m unable to update anything, almost every App is out of date and requires an update but none can be made. The downloads never finish, the circle fills up (only in the App Store, no icons on the home screen change). They can’t be installed. If I try to delete any App in wiggle mode they are back when the phone restarts and the phone can’t be shut down or respiring after trying to delete an App. It will just freeze up if you try until the home button and power button are pressed and held down or the battery dies, after which the deleted apps are back on the home screen again. My iPhone is literally becoming less useful everyday as more and more Apps require an update.
Since early July 2016, I have encountered this problem on my iPhone 6 and iPadAir 1.0.
Everything was fine before then and no iOS Apple software update was released to cause it.
Tried the slew of suggestion above to no avail. Escalated to Apple senior technical and they claimed not to know of this issue, despite the legacy comments above.
I am sickened at this point because I feel that I have lost everything from my Iphone 6. I did a warranty exchange on my phone, so when the new phone arrived I completed 2 back-ups. One in Icloud and one in Itunes. Guess what, I can’t get either one of them to restore to my replacement iphone 6. The back-up files are clearly there but from Icloud my phone does not even recognize there is a back-up file available and the itunes file it says is corrupted. So, now I am stuck manually re-entering everything and manually downloading all of Apps again. This really stinks big time, especially my photos some of them are just gone because I didn’t have them anywhere else. Luckily a lot of them I had already transferred to my computer. It still really stinks because I never had this problem when I had an android phone, ever. The Mobile store was always able to transfer my files over for me. I am very discouraged with this phone at this point and am seriously thinking of going back to my android. Apple isn’t all its hyped up to be.
it works!!!
i don’t know about ios 9.2 but in 9.3 (beta) it works
yesterday in 9.3 i had the same issue but today, suddenly it’s fine. so you can try a backup in ios 9.2 first…if still no succes, wait for ios 9.3 official release or you can go beta like i did.
beta is fine but i suggest to wait for the official release, there is no rush.
It is a glitch within the Apple ID and for some dumb reason there is no way to fix it without changing it. Resetting the network setting a couple times did let me turn on the icloud backup but it errors out when Trying to do a backup. I went in and changed the apple ID and it works perfectly. My other phone has the most current software and works fine. seem like once it happens its near impossible to fix.
This issue solemnly lies exclusive with each apple id. That is why the number of affected users affected with this they have not solved because it is not happening widely. I just tested and created another apple id and was able to back up perfectly fine on both devices that are crippled right now.
Did you figure this out? I was able to back up to laptop but don’t want to try a reset yet. I wouldn’t worry about it but my camera keeps freakin out and works when it wants to.
Spent hours trying all the above, nothing works, why does Apple give out iOS updates then leave us high and dry when things go wrong. It’s about time Apple sorted the problem of backing up to iCloud.
couldn’t back up iphone to icloud via itunes. wasn’t even getting any error messages. so, connected the phone to the wi-fi and hooked it up to the laptop. then from the phone went to settings -> icloud -> backup. turned on backup and backed up the phone. was done within minutes
Don’t understand why Apple doing such kind of stupid things ………..even for me also after doing all those steps i am not able to take my back up in icloud…Since last 3 months i am trying to get my best for my backup but with no luck ……my phone was working absolutely find before 9.2
Yep bunch of stupid nonsense going on here…. wasted the whole day doing everything recommended… But NO Success!!!!!!!! Whole day wasted over a iCloud backup?!?!?? My new iPad Pro will not pair with iTunes on my older MacBook Pro 17 inch… it says that the iTunes is out of date even though it’s 11.4 the most current version…. So having a current backup on my iCloud is my only other option but that is all down the tubes… $1000 purchase from Apple on an iPad and I can’t even set it up. Thanks apple great job!
I don’t understand what’s going on. My icloud says that there was an error enabling icloud back up. The back up is off and now I am done trying. It was working fine before I updated my phone to 9.2. Also on PC it shows that my icloud contains “documents” holding 7.57 GB of icloud. I have no idea where they came from and I am unable to see these documents. They don’t show anywhere in my storage and I am unable to see and delete.
Kindly suggest if any one knows the solution.
Thanx
This is useless. Tried all and everything. With no prior backups in icloud, this error also occurs. So problem is not related to prior backups and also not mutiple devices as I have only one iPad (luckily).
The suggestion to perform a backup before resetting the device is quite usesless as a backup cannot not be completed, Which is the issue you are trying to solve with this solution. Very smart.
Ok I’ve had this issue for a while now .. I called Apple support yesterday and they stated that there will be a fiz=x on the next update however i was advised to restore my phone to where it redownloads the iOS 9.2 then after that is complete to use the restore from your backup on iTunes. needless to say it did work for me Just of course to make sure you backup on iTunes before using the restore feature and once it’s restored, turn of backup for a few mins then turn back on then try to backup it worked on the first try apple did say it was a software issue as well hope this helps … it had been 10 weeks since my phone had backed up and now it works without flaw Good Luck
Marian nailed the fix for this. I only have 5 GB of storage space on my iCloud account. My photo library is currently 15 GB. I backup all my photos to dropbox so there is no need to save them to the iCloud. If you try to backup your photos and your photos exceed your iCloud storage space your phone will never back up. It’s pretty bad on Apple’s part not letting you know it is the photo storage that will prevent your phone from ever backing up.
Go to Settings>General>Storage & iCloud Usage>iCloud – Manage Storage>iPhone – This iPhone and under Backup options deselect Photo Library. After you do that you can go to Settings>iCloud>Backup and then select Back Up Now.
Eventually, I successfully done with iCloud backup today. I have tried all of the above steps many times since last September with iOS 9 update but haven’t succeeded. Every time I tried again when iOS is upgraded including iOS 9.2 yesterday, but nothing had changed.
Hope many of you guys can solve this issue with this way below.
1. Connect your device to your computer and open iTunes.
2. Backup your device manually on iTunes: [Manyally Back Up and Restore] > [Back Up Now]. It may will take a few minutes.
3. After completion, choose [Restore Backup…] then your device will be restarted and restore from your backups of step 1 above. It may will take dozens of minutes.
4. Go back to your device, remove former iCloud Backups if exist: Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage > Select your device that you are unable to backup and wait a few seconds. (Important: Backup Options should be loaded completely before you proceed – no spinning wheel).
5. Try iCloud manual backup on your device: Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Back Up Now.
iPhone 6plus. Backup stopped working with 9.1 upgrade (“The last backup could not be completed”). 9.2 upgrade did not fix, no change. I have tried all the suggestions above, did not fix, no change. Now what Apple? Help…anyone!
I have iOS 9.2, iPhone 5S. Update has not worked since iOS 8. Tried ALL of the above steps SEVERAL times, at least ten. Still get message that I have 3.4 g left on iCloud but, when I go to iCloud there is 0 bytes used. I have backed up manually overnight, automatic overnight. ALL TO NO AVAIL!!!
After going through a lot of BS I was able to get my phone backed up to my PC. In iTunes, under backup, and “automatically backup” select “this computer.”
Now, go to Run (Windows + R), and type in “%ProgramData%” (without the quotes). This will open up the ProgramData folder.
Now open the “Apple” folder and there should be a folder called “Lockdown” inside it. Delete that whole “Lockdown” folder. Now restart your PC and turn iCloud backup off on your phone and restart it as well.
Now start PC and phone again and try to back it up to your PC instead of iCloud. Most likely it should be able to go through, but seeing how crappy Apple’s support has been about this situation, it could be a whole lot of different sources for the problem.
Another solution, alldonewith iPhone itself:
If you see in manageStorage lots of space from a backup, and last backup is shown with a date, then there exists an backup, and you can try the “Deletebackup” button at the bottom – this did not work for me, So go back to icloud, scroll down to Backup and turn it off and wait some minutes.
Then turn it on again(you need to be connected to wifi while doing that). And go back to storage – manage Storage.
Let it show you all apps for backup, and make sure to deactivate all the large GB-eating apps. Usually it is Photos, Podcasts, some Download apps, maybe even whatsapp and other messengers as well. (since 0 byte is shown for all apps, but it is just not updating properly). The less apps you select, the better. Go through the entire list.
Then maybe it will already update its required size, if you go one time back and then again in ManageStorage +wait 30 seconds.
so next step, make sure to be connected to wifi, go to icloud – backup again, plan to have 1 hour with fast internet conenction, otherwise better 2-4 hours, and choose to backup now.
If the pregressbar moves a bit and it shows a remaining time then it is successful. Maybe go to general – autolock and change it to never.
After the backup worked, you can go again to icloud – storage – manage storage and turn on a few more apps for backup. as mentioned before, go one level back and again inside manage Storage to get an update about the addition required MB for next update.
20-30MB may just be because of some varying data, so no worries about that.
Now all is working properly again for me.
The only issue is a cancelled backup may lead to soem kind of stuck backup files, will either can be deleted by generally disabling backup, or can be used for another update (if it does not vanish when deactivating backup), but always make sure to choose apps with very small data amounts for backup on first backup try. After it works you can add more and more.
And no worries about deactivating apps for backup. It only asks if you really want to delete the backuped data, but so far the backup is not working, those data are either corrupt (outdated/not readable/not updateable), or there are simply no backup data.
your local data will stay.
Tried all above to no avail. Still no iCloud backup possible (for 4 weeks) with my iPhone6 running iOS 9.1(and iTunes 12.3.1.23). Popup still says “Not Enough Storage”, latest backup “Never”. I have 5gb of 5gb available in iCloud — no other devices backing up to iCloud, and was able to delete my old iPhone backup. (Note: HAVE been able to manually backup to iTunes on my MacBookPro without issue.) Steps I’ve done include: deleted the iPhone backup, did a few iPhone resets (sleep/wake+home), reinstalled iTunes, turned iCloud backup off/on (several times), Reset iCloud (and lost ApplePay so will be out $1 to reinitiate it, as one person above pointed out), turned off all App backups, turned off Cellular, etc etc. Nothing has worked. (Will check back here, or eventually call Apple…)
The iOS 9.1 inability-to-backup-to-iCloud issue, in my case, was with PHOTOS.
I have always had Photos set to OFF under iCloud (Settings/iCloud/Photos/all options set to OFF), so they are not supposed to backup there.
(I have all my photos on my Mac, and I “delete from phone” upon uploading new ones from my phone.) Yet, I noticed that “Backup” estimated the size of my “Photo Library” at over 5gb (my iCloud limit) (under Settings/iCloud/Storage/ManageStorage/ThisPhone/BackupOptions). This seemed odd.
I realized that my phone actually had over 2000 photos on it (amongst the camera roll / photo stream / sharing / selfies / panos, and just a handful of albums that I synch from iTunes). Except for the synched albums, these were all unnecessary/unintentional space hogs on the phone. And, I thought they weren’t backup up to iCloud — but maybe they were?
I came to find that deleting them from the phone is a challenge. (It is not an option in iTunes when synching, except for the few being uploaded.) “Select All” on the phone is only sometimes an option (e.g. in some instances such as clicking on the map). I kept at it, trying to Select All where I could and then selecting one by one until every photo was deleted.
Then, iCloud backup worked like a charm!
As I mentioned, NO Photos were supposed to be being backed up to iCloud (Photos backup has always been “OFF”) — BUT, the size of the photo library on the phone WAS listed in the “backup size estimate”, and it seems to have been the cause of the popup error saying I needed more storage and making my iCloud backup attempts fail.
Not sure if all our various iCloud backup issues have one root cause, but hope that helps someone else.
Thanks for your explanation in detail. But it’s still not working for me. In my case, I’ve been using 50GB iCloud space with monthly payment. Any idea for my case?
This took a lot of patience. Basically it worked AFTER restarting my iMac and deleting the old backups in iCloud settings. Then while the mobile devices were plugged into iTunes/iMac, I turned iCloud backup off and on the devices and manually selected Backup Now. It finally worked. It was incredibly frustrating and I tried all the other suggestions including this one for a few days on and off. As soon as I restarted my iMac… It worked. Hope this helps someone else.
My iPhone 6 will not backup manually or automatically and hasn’t since September. I have been dealing with Apple for 2 months and have spent countless hours on the phone with them. Now the “engineers” want me to do a reset and then restore from iTunes. But from what I’m reading that hasn’t been working. Plus the person I’m talking to at Apple has a VERY heavy accent and I can only understand about every 5th word she says. That just adds to my frustration level.
Since the new update for my iPhone 6+ On sept 2015 I am not able to back my iPhone to iCloud
Apple support are aware if this and not able to solve this problume. Some of my friends already switch to Android
This is a negative impact against Apple
How is this not fixed yet? 4 different iphone models in my house, 4 different icloud accounts. None of them able to back up since I updated them to iOS9. Have tried everything. Cannot even backup in itunes…
I tried everything. It’s been two months. Apple support is useles. I don’t know what to do anymore. My old backup isn’t showing up on the list of backups but it’s taking up the space on iCloud.
My daughter’s phone hadn’t been backed since 9/17. Now it finally worked. I turned iCloud backup off and then on again. I also switched to another wifi access point. When I checked this morning the phone was backed up ..FINALLY. Could be a coincidence but I’m glad the nightmare is over.
This is not a fix but I was able to get the iphone 5s ios9.1 phone to backup after a hard reset. It backed up once, but will not back up again. I have to do a hard reset each and every time. C’mon Apple this is unacceptable!!! Before upgrading it worked perfectly every day on it’s own.
I think I figured out my iphone 6 and ipad backup issues going back to Sep 7, 2015 and the upgrade to IOS 9. In my case, both devices now manually backup to icloud only if I turn off my VPN during the backup process. I hope this will help someone.
I have the same issue (iPhone 6 with iOS 9.1). When I upgraded, it worked for 2 or 3 days, but now I have the same problem. One thing: It works ONLY with very fast upload speed DSL line (I completed the backup three times this afternoon with a FTTC DSL line – 3 Mbps upload speed). Now, at home, with a slow ADSL line (0,8 Mbps upload speed), it doesn’t work again! Did someone notice the same thing?
I tried all these options and nothing works for my phone.
I don’t want to do a complete reset without a back up. But that might be the last option.
Any suggestions?
I had about 3GB worth of picutres , contacts and notes that I backed up to icloud before the new relases.
As of the update, I can’t seem to find my backup files. Apple should test these critical functionalities before making a release as people do count on back and restore.
Now the files I am looking for are not on the phone neither on icloud. Any help is appreciated. I have tried few things suggested on this forum but it didn’t work.
Didn’t work for me on my iPhone 5 running iOS 9.1. It has been grinding away for 18 hours, and says 3 hours more. But that has happened many times before, when it finally says “Backup Failed”.
I have been following this post with my own additional problem of the iCloud showing the wrong user space. None of that Networks Setting Reset thing helped and nor did the logging in and out of the iCloud account. This is what has worked for me.
Problems:
1. iCloud showing almost full with an unknown 3.51GB backup data that cannot be found on iPad, iPhone and iCloud.com. It was almost impossible to delete.
2. My iPad showed a 0KB backup size. When I tried to delete that backup and run once again, the 0KB size remain constant but the next backup size was 3.3GB. It simply showed me that I am out of space. I never had a free space of less than 2.5GB.
3. I could not delete those apps from my iCloud backup preferences showing an error “The backup could not be deleted right now”. I was so stuck.
I believe most of the people do have the problems as mentioned above. I would ask all of you to try this before restoring your phone and settings or upgrading it to iOS 9.1. That’s even more tricky, so.
Solution:
1. My iPad was showing a 3.3GB backup with “No data” shown in all the apps. I deleted the backup first and turned my iCloud backup off.
2. I knew which apps were having too much data previously. I ran a full backup on my PC and deleted all those space hogging apps. This made them disappear from the iCloud apps backup options.
3. Tried backing up the iPad with all the remaining (no third party other than GMail, Facebook and WhatsApp) apps or say, native iOS apps. I doubted that it would stop after sometime but voila! It completed.
My advice (from my experience) is to:
1. Take a full backup of third party apps and documents on PC via iTunes. You may click the Apps tab, select those thrid party apps individually and backup. You may reinstall all those third party apps later, once the iCloud backup is completed successfully. Remember, there is an option to backup all those apps’ data via PC/Mac iTunes and you most certainly won’t lose any of it. DO IT FIRST!
2. Perform an iCloud backup having no third party apps (you may allow the non-space hogging apps to remain in the iCloud preference) installed on the iPad or iPhone. Let it run completely. It will be only native iOS apps with a few apps like Facebook, GMail, WhatsApp only. This somehow overwrites or deletes or does something good to that buggy unknown backup.
I had a very slow internet connection but I believe it will work well for users in other countries.
I hope this helps all the concerned people. Kindly let me know if it worked. Thanks!
iPhone 6 iOS 9.0.2 – “Last backup could not be completed” iPad 2 iOS 8.3 – backup OK
iCloud storage: 5 GB Available: 3.6 GB
Reset network settings & Hard reset—Neither helped…
Thanks, Cloudnine(10/08/15)… The following worked:::
Backup iPhone 6 iOS 9.0.2 to iMac > settings > iCloud > storage > manage storage > Your device > Backup options > Deselect all app backups > Delete old backup >
iCloud backup toggle off/on > Back up now—IT WORKED!!!
iTunes iMac backup—UPDATE TO 9.1 DEFERRED
APPLE CARE NOT CONSULTED—CRITICISM OF APPLE SHOULD BE TEMPERED
Because of increased OS complexity, variation, & size since 2005; tech support has become problematic and anecdotal user experience has become invaluable>>>
I have a third generation iPad. It won’t back up after I upgraded to iOS 9.1. I’ve turned the backup options off for most of the apps that I don’t use. Boy that was time-consuming. The back up would start then fail. Then all the back up options would be turned it back on again automatically. Apple, I think one of your interns need some help with their coding.
Congratulations to all the people, for whom this method worked. I am still stuck and have tried this method at least five times on my iPad and iPhone. Hopeless as it seems.
I’ve tried everything listed on this page and I’m still getting the “The last backup could not be completed” message. I successfully deleted the last backup, and all the rest of it but nothing has worked. I have 179GB of iCloud storage that I’m getting screwed out of. When did Apple go to junk?
My daughter just updated her phone to 9.1 and I wished I had researched this before she did as she no longer can back up her phone, manually or automatically. This is a huge problem as she is away at college and we aren’t able to try all of these fixes until she is home for christmas…. Does anyone know of a sure way to get it fixed? I’ve looked over all the forums and some work for some people and nothing works for others. I’m really hoping someone has a fix until they can fix the bug in the next update (although I’m not hopeful considering this problem has been going on for months).
Have updated both ipad and iPhone to ios 9.1 today. Ipad updates to Icloud without issue, never had a problem. IPhone, which is a 5s, has had problems for the last 3 weeks. Have done as all have suggested above, but am still unable to back up to icloud for iPhone. I’m not creating two accounts, as I have ample storage available to me, over 20 G’s! Have backed up using iTunes for the time being, but Apple, you need to fix this and fix it fast! Otherwise, why am I paying for extra storage? Or for storage at all?
Totally same with you! I have tried everything that all the people here replied, but nothing has been changed like you.
Furthermore, I updated to iOS 9.1 today in anticipation since Apple Support replied me to wait iOS 9.1 to fix this issue. But still not working for me.
Thank you! The last suggestion (delete iCloud backup on my iPhone 6s Plus) worked for me.
P.S. I was going to sign out of iCloud and sign back in as this often solves other problems with iCloud. But I wanted to avoid that. Why? When you sign out of iCloud you are also signed out of Apple Pay. American Express (or Apple…not sure who) charges me $1.00 to sign back in to Apple Pay. Nice racket.
thanks so much. Apple support are next to useless. I called them with this issue and it was escalated to Engineers but after 2 weeks i am still waiting for the call back.
I did what was suggested above.
Icloud manage storage and delete all individual apps backups
then hit delete backup and keep hitting ‘Try Again’ about 20times.
Eventually it started to backup.
Its currently saying 21minutes remaining but is actually backing up.
My conclusion….this page knows more about apple than apple!
I have tried it all:
Deleting previous back ups
Logging out of icloud and logging in back in after hard reset
Resetting the cellular network
Forgetting all networks and reestablishing connectivity
I’ve been to the Apple Store
I’ve connected on line with Apple with two escalations –
Nothing will fix this problem and when I try to disable apps for a back up it will not allow the apps to be disabled
I have 50 GB of storage so that’s not the issue either.
Apple needs to step and fix the issue and separate IDs for each device is an AWFUL solution – completely counter to their value prop.
Same here. I tried everything in these posts. It’s for an iPad Air. In my case. Everything has been reset or logged out or deleted. And still after restarting, it won’t backup. I also can’t disable any of my apps on the backup list. You move the slider, and it says it can’t Disable. And it goes right back to the on position.
Latest software.
I even changed the name of the device like one user said. It just said iPad. After the network reset, so I our the name back in.
Literally tried EVERYTHING mentioned in these posts. And nothing.
No idea what to do next…….
Worked. Turned of all app data backups, deleted all old backups, reset network settings, toggled backups off then back on. Finally was able to complete a manual backup. Will have to wait and see if auto backup begins to work but I suspect it will.
I deleted the old backup. It was only about 1.1 GB. All my photos are backed up a different way anyway. The list was showing several apps that were backing up to iCloud. I didn’t touch them but I’m sure they were deleted when I deleted the backup for the phone. Deleting the backup also disabled iCloud backup. Now that I’ve done that step, I get a moving (instead of stuck) progress bar and it says (last time I looked) 7 minutes remaining.
Well I had the same issue of my phone not backing up and getting the message, “the last backup could not be completed. I talked to two different “level 2” Apple technicians and they were unable to help me either. But after two weeks of trying many different things, I finally got it working yesterday. I deleted ALL my backups, including the most recent one and that did the trick!
Finally got it to work you need to turn off all apps from backing up then delete old backup and then try to backup – what a waste the apple tech are as I wasted two calls for over an hour each with no assistance deleted all my photos from phone as they said that was problem and now I could have kept them – oh well at least phone backs up now to cloud! Was going to tell off apple but when I got call for support they were busy and said leave a voice mail – screw these updates not updating phone again…… what a pain apple – lets get it right the first time
The problem is that both your iPhone AND iPad are backed up to the same iCloud account. Now that iOS9 is big, we all are noticing; while back in the smaller iOS8 days, both backups were small enough to fit the 5MB iCloud limit.
The work-around seems to be to create 2 Apple IDs and associate them with two iCloud accounts, one for each device. That’s kinda a bummer because we all want to share stuff with ourselves. My feeling is that because I paid Apple good money for two devices, they should double the basic iCloud storage I get from them for free. They apparently don’t see things that way, so are inadvertently encouraging me to split my apple identity in half. By doing so, I diminish that apple user experience that I paid extra for. Ironic.
Hi I managed to solve the problem with my IOS 9.1 Public Beta 5 iCloud back up that was similar to what is listed on this page.
My solution was as follows:
1. Latest version of iTunes (on Windows in my case)
2. Attach the cable to both PC and iPhone
2. Press and hold Home button and on/off during phone reboot into Recovery Mode – Hold until iTunes states that you can reinstall latest public version of IOS
3 . Wait until installation finish
4. Now in latest public version of IOS you can force an iCloud backup to start – and it worked on my phone
I am having similar issue since I upgraded to IOS 9. I am getting error backing up to iCloud as well as to my computer. Apple Support has tried many tricks but none has worked. I have tried many solutions read on the net but have had no luck. I rushed to buy Iphone 6plus but cannot use it because I have not been able to transfer data fro my Iphone 5S. It is a shame.
Just try to delete last iCloud backup not from iPhone, but from Mac.
Go to System Preferences – iCloud – iCloudDrive – options
After deletion try to make backup in iPhone.
Worked with my iPhone 6 9.0.2
Check the name of the phone in the settings. None of these suggestions worked for me, then I noticed the update had reverted the phone name to iPhone. Changed name to match phone name of existing backup, and it worked.
Yes, you’re right, the name has been changed to “iphone”, however although I type in a new name, it doesn’t change anything! ie, whilst I can type the new name, and then click “done’, the name “iPhone” remains :-/
After iOS 9.0.2 both iPhone 6 and iPad can’t do iCloud backups. Devices indicate that the last backup was NEVER. iPhone 6 won’t even enable iCloud backup. It’s a mess. None of the so called fixes are of any help. I guess I’ll be going to an Apple Store at this point.
I spent hours on the phone w/ apple care and nothing worked. All of the above suggestions, I tried and failed. AND I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 and that is not compatible with my Iphone6. So she had to walk me through updating drivers to get around that so that itunes recognizes my phone so that I can back up to my pc vs. icloud. I agree – they need to get this figured out. I have wasted sooooooo much time on this problem.
Try this:
Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage > [your device name] > and under Backup Options deselect Photo Library or possibly also some other apps that might be taking up too much space.
Marian – marry me! I *only* use iCloud backup to backup my settings – that’s WHY I switched from Android to iOS to avoid the OS upgrade / phone migration headaches I got tired of. I don’t backup docs. I don’t back up photos. (They’re handled by SugarSync). So, having upgraded from iOS 8 to iOS 9.1 (thinking I’d even avoid problems of early iOS 9 adoption), first I was impressed it put all my apps back, all in the same places, with the same settings, with the same background photos. Then… I was plagued by “not enough iCloud storage”! Why!? The phone backup was typically 1.5Gb. iOS had even conveniently deleted by old backup. I now had 5Gb available in iCloud. So reset network. Reset device. Turned backup on and off. Backed up via iTunes. Tried again via iCloud. Then, found and tried your post. First thing I saw – backup photos!!!! (*&^%^&!!!! So much for restoring my settings following upgrade. &^%^%!!! again.
Didn’t work for me either for 5s on iOS 9.0.2 There isn’t even any backups listed after I let the wheel spin to delete. Did all the other steps and still says “iCloud Backup Failed” I haven’t had any iCloud back up issues on my other devices, just this 5s iPhone. I also have a ipad mini and 6+ and no problems there. I feel like we have a new bug fix update every day for iOS9 since the initial release. I hope Apple figures this one out….
this was a partial fix for me. after a network reset and a hard reset, it allowed me to delete my iCloud backup. With a gig free of space, it’s telling me it’s full and cannot back up photos and such.
iPhone 5 iOS 9.0.2
It’s not letting me backup either, I will try to back up onto my computer then do a factory reset on my phone and restore the backup once it starts again.
the above did not work for me. my boss is having this issue since upgrading to 6s. his 6 on ios 9 was still good up until the switch. i on the underhand only backed up to iTunes and restored from iTunes without any issue. since his issue, i upgraded to 50gb and have been trying to backup to icloud for a couple days with no luck. last night after 9hours my 6+ finally finished (about 8GB turned everything off). i now see his frustrations.
Not working, even after the newest update, followed the steps as above but the last one can’t be done as there is no ‘delete back-up’ as it says your iphone is being currently backed-up.
Sort this out Apple…
Same here: can’t delete the backup, can’t create a new one. iCloud has become completely useless–less than useless, in fact, because those annoying failure messages won’t stop.
I had this issue and I fixed it by going to each app and turning off the backup for each. It seems like one of the apps was screwing up the backup. Once I did that I was able to delete the backup and create anew one.
Cloudnine, thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ve been struggling to back up my iPhone for 10 days, and even Apple Support was mystified as to why it didn’t work. I managed after 2-3 tries to delete my old iCloud backup, but I could not get my phone to make a new one. I finally stumbled across your post. I turned off every single app, which took forever since I have about 200, and then I could create a back up. I then slowly added them back (20 at a time or so), and now they’re all back and everything looks great. I’m not sure which app caused the problem, but it isn’t doing it anymore.
Don’t feel bad; I have to delete 491 app data (99.9 % games) to manually delete 🙁 however I am relieved to finally find a possible fix to storage issue. I pray (literally) that this works. I am stuck on IOS 9.1 upgrade now; lost jb and everything due to dang iOS verison (closure); had no choice but to upgrade. Wish I knew this info when I was jailbroken. Am sick over it.
Am having issues now with trying to delete single backups under icloud storage cause phone keep freezing. Having to restart phone an hopefully try again. I hope this gives me space cause catching he*l trying to update my games and running up my wifi in the process.
Davidsays
I have also been struggling with this for months and your solution finally fixed it for me. Turned out to be an app called Travelplan that was creating the issue. After trial and error with 700 apps finally got it down to the one that was causing the issue!
Rogeriosays
How can I delete single backups for my APPS, please? I was able to delete the backup but now I cannot create a new one.
Norman Castillosays
I can not even disable or turn off an app, reads error saying can not be done at this time ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
TURBOsays
Cloudnine:
See my comments below(if published)…
Your analysis & solution was very incisive…
Turbo
It’s in your iCloud backup settings Settings>iCloud>Backup, from here you can manually select which apps and what data you want to be backed up. By turning off specific applications. If someone replied to this sorry about that I got caught up reading these things.
John Crichtonsays
Hats off for this fix. Tried it 4 times and failed each time. Eventually gave up for the night and to my surprise, this morning I found an autp update had run overnight. Now able to do manual backups as well.
Just keep tapping retry over and over again. Took abot 20-30 tries for me, then finally deleted old backup. Then I was able to manually backup. Has been about 15 hours. Hopefully when I go to sleep with my phone plugged in , it will automatically backup.
Still not working for me after way more than 30 tries. I’m so frustrated I’ve been trying to transfer my stuff from my old phone to my new one and nothing’s working. I can’t do an iTunes backup because I don’t have enough storage on my laptop even after deleting tons and tons of photos.
I’ve done all these steps.. also have the iPhone 6+ and also running on the ios9.0.1. To NO AVAIL!! I’m trying to be patient but, I chose Apple over the Android to AVOID these kind of issues.
My ipad will suddenly on and off it will not charge
I have an iPhone 6S with iOS 9.0.2 and Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage has been spinning since January… iTunes won’t even recognize my iPhone anymore. I’m unable to update anything, almost every App is out of date and requires an update but none can be made. The downloads never finish, the circle fills up (only in the App Store, no icons on the home screen change). They can’t be installed. If I try to delete any App in wiggle mode they are back when the phone restarts and the phone can’t be shut down or respiring after trying to delete an App. It will just freeze up if you try until the home button and power button are pressed and held down or the battery dies, after which the deleted apps are back on the home screen again. My iPhone is literally becoming less useful everyday as more and more Apps require an update.
Since early July 2016, I have encountered this problem on my iPhone 6 and iPadAir 1.0.
Everything was fine before then and no iOS Apple software update was released to cause it.
Tried the slew of suggestion above to no avail. Escalated to Apple senior technical and they claimed not to know of this issue, despite the legacy comments above.
I am sickened at this point because I feel that I have lost everything from my Iphone 6. I did a warranty exchange on my phone, so when the new phone arrived I completed 2 back-ups. One in Icloud and one in Itunes. Guess what, I can’t get either one of them to restore to my replacement iphone 6. The back-up files are clearly there but from Icloud my phone does not even recognize there is a back-up file available and the itunes file it says is corrupted. So, now I am stuck manually re-entering everything and manually downloading all of Apps again. This really stinks big time, especially my photos some of them are just gone because I didn’t have them anywhere else. Luckily a lot of them I had already transferred to my computer. It still really stinks because I never had this problem when I had an android phone, ever. The Mobile store was always able to transfer my files over for me. I am very discouraged with this phone at this point and am seriously thinking of going back to my android. Apple isn’t all its hyped up to be.
This procedure did nothing to fix the backup problem.
it works!!!
i don’t know about ios 9.2 but in 9.3 (beta) it works
yesterday in 9.3 i had the same issue but today, suddenly it’s fine. so you can try a backup in ios 9.2 first…if still no succes, wait for ios 9.3 official release or you can go beta like i did.
beta is fine but i suggest to wait for the official release, there is no rush.
It is a glitch within the Apple ID and for some dumb reason there is no way to fix it without changing it. Resetting the network setting a couple times did let me turn on the icloud backup but it errors out when Trying to do a backup. I went in and changed the apple ID and it works perfectly. My other phone has the most current software and works fine. seem like once it happens its near impossible to fix.
This issue solemnly lies exclusive with each apple id. That is why the number of affected users affected with this they have not solved because it is not happening widely. I just tested and created another apple id and was able to back up perfectly fine on both devices that are crippled right now.
ios 9.2.1 did not fix icloud backup problem for me either. Apple is ignoring this very frustrating time consuming problem
Made no difference
Still no backup being created
Did you figure this out? I was able to back up to laptop but don’t want to try a reset yet. I wouldn’t worry about it but my camera keeps freakin out and works when it wants to.
Apple just produced a software update and sent it down.
Just about to try back up
nothing works and i’ve tried everything
sometimes i’m ashamed that i like and i chose apple products…
Spent hours trying all the above, nothing works, why does Apple give out iOS updates then leave us high and dry when things go wrong. It’s about time Apple sorted the problem of backing up to iCloud.
It did not work with my iPhone 6+
It seems that Apple is iqnoreing this issue
couldn’t back up iphone to icloud via itunes. wasn’t even getting any error messages. so, connected the phone to the wi-fi and hooked it up to the laptop. then from the phone went to settings -> icloud -> backup. turned on backup and backed up the phone. was done within minutes
Is there any further update off anyone on this?
I have the same issue and have tried all of the above and spoken to senior technicians at Apple and no joy.
I use mine for work as well so the data is important to me.
I have 6 plus Iso 9.2
Don’t understand why Apple doing such kind of stupid things ………..even for me also after doing all those steps i am not able to take my back up in icloud…Since last 3 months i am trying to get my best for my backup but with no luck ……my phone was working absolutely find before 9.2
Yep bunch of stupid nonsense going on here…. wasted the whole day doing everything recommended… But NO Success!!!!!!!! Whole day wasted over a iCloud backup?!?!?? My new iPad Pro will not pair with iTunes on my older MacBook Pro 17 inch… it says that the iTunes is out of date even though it’s 11.4 the most current version…. So having a current backup on my iCloud is my only other option but that is all down the tubes… $1000 purchase from Apple on an iPad and I can’t even set it up. Thanks apple great job!
I don’t understand what’s going on. My icloud says that there was an error enabling icloud back up. The back up is off and now I am done trying. It was working fine before I updated my phone to 9.2. Also on PC it shows that my icloud contains “documents” holding 7.57 GB of icloud. I have no idea where they came from and I am unable to see these documents. They don’t show anywhere in my storage and I am unable to see and delete.
Kindly suggest if any one knows the solution.
Thanx
This is useless. Tried all and everything. With no prior backups in icloud, this error also occurs. So problem is not related to prior backups and also not mutiple devices as I have only one iPad (luckily).
The suggestion to perform a backup before resetting the device is quite usesless as a backup cannot not be completed, Which is the issue you are trying to solve with this solution. Very smart.
Ok I’ve had this issue for a while now .. I called Apple support yesterday and they stated that there will be a fiz=x on the next update however i was advised to restore my phone to where it redownloads the iOS 9.2 then after that is complete to use the restore from your backup on iTunes. needless to say it did work for me Just of course to make sure you backup on iTunes before using the restore feature and once it’s restored, turn of backup for a few mins then turn back on then try to backup it worked on the first try apple did say it was a software issue as well hope this helps … it had been 10 weeks since my phone had backed up and now it works without flaw Good Luck
Marian nailed the fix for this. I only have 5 GB of storage space on my iCloud account. My photo library is currently 15 GB. I backup all my photos to dropbox so there is no need to save them to the iCloud. If you try to backup your photos and your photos exceed your iCloud storage space your phone will never back up. It’s pretty bad on Apple’s part not letting you know it is the photo storage that will prevent your phone from ever backing up.
Go to Settings>General>Storage & iCloud Usage>iCloud – Manage Storage>iPhone – This iPhone and under Backup options deselect Photo Library. After you do that you can go to Settings>iCloud>Backup and then select Back Up Now.
It did not work with me
Fixed with a new way – iTunes!
Eventually, I successfully done with iCloud backup today. I have tried all of the above steps many times since last September with iOS 9 update but haven’t succeeded. Every time I tried again when iOS is upgraded including iOS 9.2 yesterday, but nothing had changed.
Hope many of you guys can solve this issue with this way below.
1. Connect your device to your computer and open iTunes.
2. Backup your device manually on iTunes: [Manyally Back Up and Restore] > [Back Up Now]. It may will take a few minutes.
3. After completion, choose [Restore Backup…] then your device will be restarted and restore from your backups of step 1 above. It may will take dozens of minutes.
4. Go back to your device, remove former iCloud Backups if exist: Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage > Select your device that you are unable to backup and wait a few seconds. (Important: Backup Options should be loaded completely before you proceed – no spinning wheel).
5. Try iCloud manual backup on your device: Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Back Up Now.
Good luck!
iPhone 6plus. Backup stopped working with 9.1 upgrade (“The last backup could not be completed”). 9.2 upgrade did not fix, no change. I have tried all the suggestions above, did not fix, no change. Now what Apple? Help…anyone!
I have iOS 9.2, iPhone 5S. Update has not worked since iOS 8. Tried ALL of the above steps SEVERAL times, at least ten. Still get message that I have 3.4 g left on iCloud but, when I go to iCloud there is 0 bytes used. I have backed up manually overnight, automatic overnight. ALL TO NO AVAIL!!!
Updated to IOS 9.02 and still could not back up to iCloud
Apple should look into this issue and fix it promptly
This issue is a negative impact against Apple.
I updated to iOS 9.2 and it’s still not working.
Resetting network settings did the trick for me.
How can I reset network settings?
After going through a lot of BS I was able to get my phone backed up to my PC. In iTunes, under backup, and “automatically backup” select “this computer.”
Now, go to Run (Windows + R), and type in “%ProgramData%” (without the quotes). This will open up the ProgramData folder.
Now open the “Apple” folder and there should be a folder called “Lockdown” inside it. Delete that whole “Lockdown” folder. Now restart your PC and turn iCloud backup off on your phone and restart it as well.
Now start PC and phone again and try to back it up to your PC instead of iCloud. Most likely it should be able to go through, but seeing how crappy Apple’s support has been about this situation, it could be a whole lot of different sources for the problem.
It did did not work for me
Another solution, alldonewith iPhone itself:
If you see in manageStorage lots of space from a backup, and last backup is shown with a date, then there exists an backup, and you can try the “Deletebackup” button at the bottom – this did not work for me, So go back to icloud, scroll down to Backup and turn it off and wait some minutes.
Then turn it on again(you need to be connected to wifi while doing that). And go back to storage – manage Storage.
Let it show you all apps for backup, and make sure to deactivate all the large GB-eating apps. Usually it is Photos, Podcasts, some Download apps, maybe even whatsapp and other messengers as well. (since 0 byte is shown for all apps, but it is just not updating properly). The less apps you select, the better. Go through the entire list.
Then maybe it will already update its required size, if you go one time back and then again in ManageStorage +wait 30 seconds.
so next step, make sure to be connected to wifi, go to icloud – backup again, plan to have 1 hour with fast internet conenction, otherwise better 2-4 hours, and choose to backup now.
If the pregressbar moves a bit and it shows a remaining time then it is successful. Maybe go to general – autolock and change it to never.
After the backup worked, you can go again to icloud – storage – manage storage and turn on a few more apps for backup. as mentioned before, go one level back and again inside manage Storage to get an update about the addition required MB for next update.
20-30MB may just be because of some varying data, so no worries about that.
Now all is working properly again for me.
The only issue is a cancelled backup may lead to soem kind of stuck backup files, will either can be deleted by generally disabling backup, or can be used for another update (if it does not vanish when deactivating backup), but always make sure to choose apps with very small data amounts for backup on first backup try. After it works you can add more and more.
And no worries about deactivating apps for backup. It only asks if you really want to delete the backuped data, but so far the backup is not working, those data are either corrupt (outdated/not readable/not updateable), or there are simply no backup data.
your local data will stay.
hope this helps 🙂
It seems that Apple is unable to resolve iCloud back up issue
I found a simple and easy solution after trying absolutely everything:
1. get icloud for windows
2. go to storage
3. select and delete backup of the device that’s not working
4. backup again on ios.
Worked perfectly.
Tried all above to no avail. Still no iCloud backup possible (for 4 weeks) with my iPhone6 running iOS 9.1(and iTunes 12.3.1.23). Popup still says “Not Enough Storage”, latest backup “Never”. I have 5gb of 5gb available in iCloud — no other devices backing up to iCloud, and was able to delete my old iPhone backup. (Note: HAVE been able to manually backup to iTunes on my MacBookPro without issue.) Steps I’ve done include: deleted the iPhone backup, did a few iPhone resets (sleep/wake+home), reinstalled iTunes, turned iCloud backup off/on (several times), Reset iCloud (and lost ApplePay so will be out $1 to reinitiate it, as one person above pointed out), turned off all App backups, turned off Cellular, etc etc. Nothing has worked. (Will check back here, or eventually call Apple…)
UPDATE: I resolved my issue.
The iOS 9.1 inability-to-backup-to-iCloud issue, in my case, was with PHOTOS.
I have always had Photos set to OFF under iCloud (Settings/iCloud/Photos/all options set to OFF), so they are not supposed to backup there.
(I have all my photos on my Mac, and I “delete from phone” upon uploading new ones from my phone.) Yet, I noticed that “Backup” estimated the size of my “Photo Library” at over 5gb (my iCloud limit) (under Settings/iCloud/Storage/ManageStorage/ThisPhone/BackupOptions). This seemed odd.
I realized that my phone actually had over 2000 photos on it (amongst the camera roll / photo stream / sharing / selfies / panos, and just a handful of albums that I synch from iTunes). Except for the synched albums, these were all unnecessary/unintentional space hogs on the phone. And, I thought they weren’t backup up to iCloud — but maybe they were?
I came to find that deleting them from the phone is a challenge. (It is not an option in iTunes when synching, except for the few being uploaded.) “Select All” on the phone is only sometimes an option (e.g. in some instances such as clicking on the map). I kept at it, trying to Select All where I could and then selecting one by one until every photo was deleted.
Then, iCloud backup worked like a charm!
As I mentioned, NO Photos were supposed to be being backed up to iCloud (Photos backup has always been “OFF”) — BUT, the size of the photo library on the phone WAS listed in the “backup size estimate”, and it seems to have been the cause of the popup error saying I needed more storage and making my iCloud backup attempts fail.
Not sure if all our various iCloud backup issues have one root cause, but hope that helps someone else.
Thanks for your explanation in detail. But it’s still not working for me. In my case, I’ve been using 50GB iCloud space with monthly payment. Any idea for my case?
This took a lot of patience. Basically it worked AFTER restarting my iMac and deleting the old backups in iCloud settings. Then while the mobile devices were plugged into iTunes/iMac, I turned iCloud backup off and on the devices and manually selected Backup Now. It finally worked. It was incredibly frustrating and I tried all the other suggestions including this one for a few days on and off. As soon as I restarted my iMac… It worked. Hope this helps someone else.
Tried for 2 hours to get 5c to backup started at 4 in the morning. Alternately get never and the date of last backup. Really a pain
My iPhone 6 will not backup manually or automatically and hasn’t since September. I have been dealing with Apple for 2 months and have spent countless hours on the phone with them. Now the “engineers” want me to do a reset and then restore from iTunes. But from what I’m reading that hasn’t been working. Plus the person I’m talking to at Apple has a VERY heavy accent and I can only understand about every 5th word she says. That just adds to my frustration level.
I’ve done all these steps and still backup could not be completed with my iPhone 6 Plus. Waiting for Apple next update which might solve it
Since the new update for my iPhone 6+ On sept 2015 I am not able to back my iPhone to iCloud
Apple support are aware if this and not able to solve this problume. Some of my friends already switch to Android
This is a negative impact against Apple
I ve done everything still to this date cannot back up my i phone 5s billion dollar corp and they cant get this right
How is this not fixed yet? 4 different iphone models in my house, 4 different icloud accounts. None of them able to back up since I updated them to iOS9. Have tried everything. Cannot even backup in itunes…
I tried everything. It’s been two months. Apple support is useles. I don’t know what to do anymore. My old backup isn’t showing up on the list of backups but it’s taking up the space on iCloud.
My daughter’s phone hadn’t been backed since 9/17. Now it finally worked. I turned iCloud backup off and then on again. I also switched to another wifi access point. When I checked this morning the phone was backed up ..FINALLY. Could be a coincidence but I’m glad the nightmare is over.
This is not a fix but I was able to get the iphone 5s ios9.1 phone to backup after a hard reset. It backed up once, but will not back up again. I have to do a hard reset each and every time. C’mon Apple this is unacceptable!!! Before upgrading it worked perfectly every day on it’s own.
I think I figured out my iphone 6 and ipad backup issues going back to Sep 7, 2015 and the upgrade to IOS 9. In my case, both devices now manually backup to icloud only if I turn off my VPN during the backup process. I hope this will help someone.
I don’t know why, but resetting network settings apparently worked for my
iPhone 5S
iPad Air 2
I have the same issue (iPhone 6 with iOS 9.1). When I upgraded, it worked for 2 or 3 days, but now I have the same problem. One thing: It works ONLY with very fast upload speed DSL line (I completed the backup three times this afternoon with a FTTC DSL line – 3 Mbps upload speed). Now, at home, with a slow ADSL line (0,8 Mbps upload speed), it doesn’t work again! Did someone notice the same thing?
you mean, it seems this issue has something to do with internet quality like velocity or something?
Since installing iOS 9.1 all backups have failed. Have tried several suggested fixes to no avail. APPLE needs to step up and FIX THIS!!
I tried all these options and nothing works for my phone.
I don’t want to do a complete reset without a back up. But that might be the last option.
Any suggestions?
have done all of the above, and still not backing up, grrrrrr!!!
Any suggestions?
I had about 3GB worth of picutres , contacts and notes that I backed up to icloud before the new relases.
As of the update, I can’t seem to find my backup files. Apple should test these critical functionalities before making a release as people do count on back and restore.
Now the files I am looking for are not on the phone neither on icloud. Any help is appreciated. I have tried few things suggested on this forum but it didn’t work.
Didn’t work for me on my iPhone 5 running iOS 9.1. It has been grinding away for 18 hours, and says 3 hours more. But that has happened many times before, when it finally says “Backup Failed”.
Apple needs to fix.
Nothing works for my phone. All other devises back up without issues.
I have been following this post with my own additional problem of the iCloud showing the wrong user space. None of that Networks Setting Reset thing helped and nor did the logging in and out of the iCloud account. This is what has worked for me.
Problems:
1. iCloud showing almost full with an unknown 3.51GB backup data that cannot be found on iPad, iPhone and iCloud.com. It was almost impossible to delete.
2. My iPad showed a 0KB backup size. When I tried to delete that backup and run once again, the 0KB size remain constant but the next backup size was 3.3GB. It simply showed me that I am out of space. I never had a free space of less than 2.5GB.
3. I could not delete those apps from my iCloud backup preferences showing an error “The backup could not be deleted right now”. I was so stuck.
I believe most of the people do have the problems as mentioned above. I would ask all of you to try this before restoring your phone and settings or upgrading it to iOS 9.1. That’s even more tricky, so.
Solution:
1. My iPad was showing a 3.3GB backup with “No data” shown in all the apps. I deleted the backup first and turned my iCloud backup off.
2. I knew which apps were having too much data previously. I ran a full backup on my PC and deleted all those space hogging apps. This made them disappear from the iCloud apps backup options.
3. Tried backing up the iPad with all the remaining (no third party other than GMail, Facebook and WhatsApp) apps or say, native iOS apps. I doubted that it would stop after sometime but voila! It completed.
My advice (from my experience) is to:
1. Take a full backup of third party apps and documents on PC via iTunes. You may click the Apps tab, select those thrid party apps individually and backup. You may reinstall all those third party apps later, once the iCloud backup is completed successfully. Remember, there is an option to backup all those apps’ data via PC/Mac iTunes and you most certainly won’t lose any of it. DO IT FIRST!
2. Perform an iCloud backup having no third party apps (you may allow the non-space hogging apps to remain in the iCloud preference) installed on the iPad or iPhone. Let it run completely. It will be only native iOS apps with a few apps like Facebook, GMail, WhatsApp only. This somehow overwrites or deletes or does something good to that buggy unknown backup.
I had a very slow internet connection but I believe it will work well for users in other countries.
I hope this helps all the concerned people. Kindly let me know if it worked. Thanks!
I followed the instructions 3 times with my iphone 6 and it does not backup.
Any suggestions?
iPhone 6 iOS 9.0.2 – “Last backup could not be completed” iPad 2 iOS 8.3 – backup OK
iCloud storage: 5 GB Available: 3.6 GB
Reset network settings & Hard reset—Neither helped…
Thanks, Cloudnine(10/08/15)… The following worked:::
Backup iPhone 6 iOS 9.0.2 to iMac > settings > iCloud > storage > manage storage > Your device > Backup options > Deselect all app backups > Delete old backup >
iCloud backup toggle off/on > Back up now—IT WORKED!!!
iTunes iMac backup—UPDATE TO 9.1 DEFERRED
APPLE CARE NOT CONSULTED—CRITICISM OF APPLE SHOULD BE TEMPERED
Because of increased OS complexity, variation, & size since 2005; tech support has become problematic and anecdotal user experience has become invaluable>>>
I have a third generation iPad. It won’t back up after I upgraded to iOS 9.1. I’ve turned the backup options off for most of the apps that I don’t use. Boy that was time-consuming. The back up would start then fail. Then all the back up options would be turned it back on again automatically. Apple, I think one of your interns need some help with their coding.
Congratulations to all the people, for whom this method worked. I am still stuck and have tried this method at least five times on my iPad and iPhone. Hopeless as it seems.
I’ve tried everything listed on this page and I’m still getting the “The last backup could not be completed” message. I successfully deleted the last backup, and all the rest of it but nothing has worked. I have 179GB of iCloud storage that I’m getting screwed out of. When did Apple go to junk?
My daughter just updated her phone to 9.1 and I wished I had researched this before she did as she no longer can back up her phone, manually or automatically. This is a huge problem as she is away at college and we aren’t able to try all of these fixes until she is home for christmas…. Does anyone know of a sure way to get it fixed? I’ve looked over all the forums and some work for some people and nothing works for others. I’m really hoping someone has a fix until they can fix the bug in the next update (although I’m not hopeful considering this problem has been going on for months).
Have updated both ipad and iPhone to ios 9.1 today. Ipad updates to Icloud without issue, never had a problem. IPhone, which is a 5s, has had problems for the last 3 weeks. Have done as all have suggested above, but am still unable to back up to icloud for iPhone. I’m not creating two accounts, as I have ample storage available to me, over 20 G’s! Have backed up using iTunes for the time being, but Apple, you need to fix this and fix it fast! Otherwise, why am I paying for extra storage? Or for storage at all?
Totally same with you! I have tried everything that all the people here replied, but nothing has been changed like you.
Furthermore, I updated to iOS 9.1 today in anticipation since Apple Support replied me to wait iOS 9.1 to fix this issue. But still not working for me.
Thank you! The last suggestion (delete iCloud backup on my iPhone 6s Plus) worked for me.
P.S. I was going to sign out of iCloud and sign back in as this often solves other problems with iCloud. But I wanted to avoid that. Why? When you sign out of iCloud you are also signed out of Apple Pay. American Express (or Apple…not sure who) charges me $1.00 to sign back in to Apple Pay. Nice racket.
thanks so much. Apple support are next to useless. I called them with this issue and it was escalated to Engineers but after 2 weeks i am still waiting for the call back.
I did what was suggested above.
Icloud manage storage and delete all individual apps backups
then hit delete backup and keep hitting ‘Try Again’ about 20times.
Eventually it started to backup.
Its currently saying 21minutes remaining but is actually backing up.
My conclusion….this page knows more about apple than apple!
Further to my comment above. it did back up but then would not backup again.
Clearly this issue is worse than first thought.
SO frustrating. Apple – PLEASE fix this! Wasn’t the latest update suppose to fix this????
I have tried it all:
Deleting previous back ups
Logging out of icloud and logging in back in after hard reset
Resetting the cellular network
Forgetting all networks and reestablishing connectivity
I’ve been to the Apple Store
I’ve connected on line with Apple with two escalations –
Nothing will fix this problem and when I try to disable apps for a back up it will not allow the apps to be disabled
I have 50 GB of storage so that’s not the issue either.
Apple needs to step and fix the issue and separate IDs for each device is an AWFUL solution – completely counter to their value prop.
Me either. I have tried everything that may people here replied, but nothing has been changed like you.
same exact deal with me I can not even disable any apps, nada zippo
Same here. I tried everything in these posts. It’s for an iPad Air. In my case. Everything has been reset or logged out or deleted. And still after restarting, it won’t backup. I also can’t disable any of my apps on the backup list. You move the slider, and it says it can’t Disable. And it goes right back to the on position.
Latest software.
I even changed the name of the device like one user said. It just said iPad. After the network reset, so I our the name back in.
Literally tried EVERYTHING mentioned in these posts. And nothing.
No idea what to do next…….
Worked. Turned of all app data backups, deleted all old backups, reset network settings, toggled backups off then back on. Finally was able to complete a manual backup. Will have to wait and see if auto backup begins to work but I suspect it will.
I deleted the old backup. It was only about 1.1 GB. All my photos are backed up a different way anyway. The list was showing several apps that were backing up to iCloud. I didn’t touch them but I’m sure they were deleted when I deleted the backup for the phone. Deleting the backup also disabled iCloud backup. Now that I’ve done that step, I get a moving (instead of stuck) progress bar and it says (last time I looked) 7 minutes remaining.
Well I had the same issue of my phone not backing up and getting the message, “the last backup could not be completed. I talked to two different “level 2” Apple technicians and they were unable to help me either. But after two weeks of trying many different things, I finally got it working yesterday. I deleted ALL my backups, including the most recent one and that did the trick!
Finally got it to work you need to turn off all apps from backing up then delete old backup and then try to backup – what a waste the apple tech are as I wasted two calls for over an hour each with no assistance deleted all my photos from phone as they said that was problem and now I could have kept them – oh well at least phone backs up now to cloud! Was going to tell off apple but when I got call for support they were busy and said leave a voice mail – screw these updates not updating phone again…… what a pain apple – lets get it right the first time
The problem is that both your iPhone AND iPad are backed up to the same iCloud account. Now that iOS9 is big, we all are noticing; while back in the smaller iOS8 days, both backups were small enough to fit the 5MB iCloud limit.
The work-around seems to be to create 2 Apple IDs and associate them with two iCloud accounts, one for each device. That’s kinda a bummer because we all want to share stuff with ourselves. My feeling is that because I paid Apple good money for two devices, they should double the basic iCloud storage I get from them for free. They apparently don’t see things that way, so are inadvertently encouraging me to split my apple identity in half. By doing so, I diminish that apple user experience that I paid extra for. Ironic.
Hi I managed to solve the problem with my IOS 9.1 Public Beta 5 iCloud back up that was similar to what is listed on this page.
My solution was as follows:
1. Latest version of iTunes (on Windows in my case)
2. Attach the cable to both PC and iPhone
2. Press and hold Home button and on/off during phone reboot into Recovery Mode – Hold until iTunes states that you can reinstall latest public version of IOS
3 . Wait until installation finish
4. Now in latest public version of IOS you can force an iCloud backup to start – and it worked on my phone
I hope it will work for you as well
Suggested options do not resolve the issue.
Please fix this ASAP. The Test / DEV team needs to be more diligent about releases with issues like this.
Very disappointed.
I am having similar issue since I upgraded to IOS 9. I am getting error backing up to iCloud as well as to my computer. Apple Support has tried many tricks but none has worked. I have tried many solutions read on the net but have had no luck. I rushed to buy Iphone 6plus but cannot use it because I have not been able to transfer data fro my Iphone 5S. It is a shame.
Thanks for all the help ppl. Deleting the existing backup using my mac worked for me, iPhone 5s, Mac Mini > iCloud > Manage > Bacjups > Delete.
Just try to delete last iCloud backup not from iPhone, but from Mac.
Go to System Preferences – iCloud – iCloudDrive – options
After deletion try to make backup in iPhone.
Worked with my iPhone 6 9.0.2
Check the name of the phone in the settings. None of these suggestions worked for me, then I noticed the update had reverted the phone name to iPhone. Changed name to match phone name of existing backup, and it worked.
Yes, you’re right, the name has been changed to “iphone”, however although I type in a new name, it doesn’t change anything! ie, whilst I can type the new name, and then click “done’, the name “iPhone” remains :-/
After iOS 9.0.2 both iPhone 6 and iPad can’t do iCloud backups. Devices indicate that the last backup was NEVER. iPhone 6 won’t even enable iCloud backup. It’s a mess. None of the so called fixes are of any help. I guess I’ll be going to an Apple Store at this point.
I spent hours on the phone w/ apple care and nothing worked. All of the above suggestions, I tried and failed. AND I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 and that is not compatible with my Iphone6. So she had to walk me through updating drivers to get around that so that itunes recognizes my phone so that I can back up to my pc vs. icloud. I agree – they need to get this figured out. I have wasted sooooooo much time on this problem.
Try to put the Voice & Data in 3G. Settings –> Cellular –> Voice & Data.
It worked for me.
Try this:
Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage > [your device name] > and under Backup Options deselect Photo Library or possibly also some other apps that might be taking up too much space.
Marian – marry me! I *only* use iCloud backup to backup my settings – that’s WHY I switched from Android to iOS to avoid the OS upgrade / phone migration headaches I got tired of. I don’t backup docs. I don’t back up photos. (They’re handled by SugarSync). So, having upgraded from iOS 8 to iOS 9.1 (thinking I’d even avoid problems of early iOS 9 adoption), first I was impressed it put all my apps back, all in the same places, with the same settings, with the same background photos. Then… I was plagued by “not enough iCloud storage”! Why!? The phone backup was typically 1.5Gb. iOS had even conveniently deleted by old backup. I now had 5Gb available in iCloud. So reset network. Reset device. Turned backup on and off. Backed up via iTunes. Tried again via iCloud. Then, found and tried your post. First thing I saw – backup photos!!!! (*&^%^&!!!! So much for restoring my settings following upgrade. &^%^%!!! again.
I was very skeptical that this would work since I had tried many other solutions and have 50gb storage. But this did work for me–THANK YOU!!
what exactly worked? can you tell me the steps?
Didn’t work for me either for 5s on iOS 9.0.2 There isn’t even any backups listed after I let the wheel spin to delete. Did all the other steps and still says “iCloud Backup Failed” I haven’t had any iCloud back up issues on my other devices, just this 5s iPhone. I also have a ipad mini and 6+ and no problems there. I feel like we have a new bug fix update every day for iOS9 since the initial release. I hope Apple figures this one out….
Still didn’t work.
This fix did not work. Apple needs to fix this, as there are thousands of customers that are experiencing this problem.
this was a partial fix for me. after a network reset and a hard reset, it allowed me to delete my iCloud backup. With a gig free of space, it’s telling me it’s full and cannot back up photos and such.
iPhone 5 iOS 9.0.2
It’s not letting me backup either, I will try to back up onto my computer then do a factory reset on my phone and restore the backup once it starts again.
Still does not work for me
It worked for me following the last suggestion to delete all the backups. Thank You.
iPhone 5S, iOS 9.0.2
the above did not work for me. my boss is having this issue since upgrading to 6s. his 6 on ios 9 was still good up until the switch. i on the underhand only backed up to iTunes and restored from iTunes without any issue. since his issue, i upgraded to 50gb and have been trying to backup to icloud for a couple days with no luck. last night after 9hours my 6+ finally finished (about 8GB turned everything off). i now see his frustrations.
Not working, even after the newest update, followed the steps as above but the last one can’t be done as there is no ‘delete back-up’ as it says your iphone is being currently backed-up.
Sort this out Apple…
Cannot delete old back up….
Same here: can’t delete the backup, can’t create a new one. iCloud has become completely useless–less than useless, in fact, because those annoying failure messages won’t stop.
I had this issue and I fixed it by going to each app and turning off the backup for each. It seems like one of the apps was screwing up the backup. Once I did that I was able to delete the backup and create anew one.
worked for me too
This finally worked for me also. What is really going on?
Now if I could just get my apps to update in the iTunes application on my PC.
Cloudnine, thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ve been struggling to back up my iPhone for 10 days, and even Apple Support was mystified as to why it didn’t work. I managed after 2-3 tries to delete my old iCloud backup, but I could not get my phone to make a new one. I finally stumbled across your post. I turned off every single app, which took forever since I have about 200, and then I could create a back up. I then slowly added them back (20 at a time or so), and now they’re all back and everything looks great. I’m not sure which app caused the problem, but it isn’t doing it anymore.
Don’t feel bad; I have to delete 491 app data (99.9 % games) to manually delete 🙁 however I am relieved to finally find a possible fix to storage issue. I pray (literally) that this works. I am stuck on IOS 9.1 upgrade now; lost jb and everything due to dang iOS verison (closure); had no choice but to upgrade. Wish I knew this info when I was jailbroken. Am sick over it.
Am having issues now with trying to delete single backups under icloud storage cause phone keep freezing. Having to restart phone an hopefully try again. I hope this gives me space cause catching he*l trying to update my games and running up my wifi in the process.
I have also been struggling with this for months and your solution finally fixed it for me. Turned out to be an app called Travelplan that was creating the issue. After trial and error with 700 apps finally got it down to the one that was causing the issue!
How can I delete single backups for my APPS, please? I was able to delete the backup but now I cannot create a new one.
I can not even disable or turn off an app, reads error saying can not be done at this time ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Cloudnine:
See my comments below(if published)…
Your analysis & solution was very incisive…
Turbo
how to i turn off app backs ups so i can do an icloud back up plz
Thanks, Cloudnine. This worked on both 6 and 5S iphones.
It works! Thank you so much for this fix. This was driving me crazy. THANK YOU!
This may sound dumb, but how did you go into each app and turn off the backup? When I open an app I don’t see where to turn off the backup. Thanks!
It’s in your iCloud backup settings Settings>iCloud>Backup, from here you can manually select which apps and what data you want to be backed up. By turning off specific applications. If someone replied to this sorry about that I got caught up reading these things.
Hats off for this fix. Tried it 4 times and failed each time. Eventually gave up for the night and to my surprise, this morning I found an autp update had run overnight. Now able to do manual backups as well.
Please provide me the steps to do this. Thank you.
Just keep tapping retry over and over again. Took abot 20-30 tries for me, then finally deleted old backup. Then I was able to manually backup. Has been about 15 hours. Hopefully when I go to sleep with my phone plugged in , it will automatically backup.
This worked for me (repeatedly selecting “try again”) after something more than 30 times it eventually did delete the backup
Still not working for me after way more than 30 tries. I’m so frustrated I’ve been trying to transfer my stuff from my old phone to my new one and nothing’s working. I can’t do an iTunes backup because I don’t have enough storage on my laptop even after deleting tons and tons of photos.
Thanks! That worked!
It worked thanks. Just keep tapping retry over and over again. Took abot 20-30 tries for me, then finally deleted old backup.
Worked for me! Finally!!
How did it work because mines stil not working!!! After the new update I tried the backup but still the same
how?
Can you please list the key strokes for this dummy.
Tried everything & nothing works!!
This fix did not fix it for my iPhone 6Plus running iOS9.0.1
I’ve done all these steps.. also have the iPhone 6+ and also running on the ios9.0.1. To NO AVAIL!! I’m trying to be patient but, I chose Apple over the Android to AVOID these kind of issues.
It is uncredible that Apple doesn’t fix this problem.
I did all steps but still doesn’t work. My iphone continues without back up…
Did anyone get this to work?? This is making me nuts!
Mine does not work and now I deleted by backup
David, i choose Apple because of same reasons but they are still not concerning with this.