Copy Shelter: Backup & Restore

Your photo library onto a Mac you own or a cloud folder you already pay for. Read back and checked afterwards, so you find out today, not on the day you need it.

Copy Shelter puts your iPhone's photos and files somewhere they survive the phone: a Mac on your network running Copy Shelter, or a folder in a cloud account you already pay for. No monthly storage bill, because we have no storage to sell you.

WHAT IT BACKS UP

Your whole photo library. Photos, videos, Live Photos, RAW files and your edits. Where iCloud Photos has offloaded an original and left a preview on the phone, Copy Shelter fetches the full resolution version back down first, so what lands in the backup is the picture.

Files and folders you choose, from On My iPhone or iCloud Drive.

Contacts, calendars and reminders, with your permission, written as files you can open anywhere.

WHAT NOTHING ON THIS STORE CAN BACK UP

iOS keeps most of a phone out of reach of every app, this one included. Messages, Mail, Health data, other apps' data, your settings and your Apple Watch data cannot be read by any App Store app. Copy Shelter says so during setup, while you can still do something about it.

Using both is the sensible answer. iCloud covers the phone as a phone. Copy Shelter covers your photos and files in a form you can open on a Mac, keep on your own storage, and restore from without an Apple account.

WHERE IT SENDS

A Mac on the same network, running Copy Shelter, which puts the backup wherever that Mac keeps its own. This is the fast one, and both machines have to be awake.

Or a cloud folder your iPhone can already reach. That works anywhere, and it counts as a second copy once the provider has finished uploading it.

Pairing a phone with a Mac takes a six character code, read off the Mac and typed into the phone once. Being on the same wifi is not enough: a café network is a network too.

Uploads run while the app is open. iOS gives no app hours of background time for this, so the progress stays on screen and tells you honestly how much is left.

A BACKUP NOBODY HAS READ BACK IS A GUESS

Every piece is read back and checked against the hash it was stored under, so a mismatch is proof. A piece that has been deleted underneath the backup is reported as missing.

ENCRYPTED BEFORE IT LEAVES THE PHONE

The key is generated on your device and never transmitted. You pick a passphrase that opens the backup on any Mac, and a recovery key is written down too, so forgetting the passphrase is not the end of it.

GETTING FILES BACK IS NEVER A PAID FEATURE

Your newest backup restores on Free, after a licence ends, forever. Browsing older versions is a Pro convenience, and it unlocks for everybody the moment the newest backup cannot deliver.

IT SAYS WHERE YOU STAND

What is protected, where the copies are, when each was last checked, and a score out of 100 that only counts what has been verified. It speaks up after 7 days without a backup that worked.

IF WE DISAPPEAR, YOUR BACKUPS STILL OPEN

The repository format is documented, and a free command line tool reads a backup on a Mac with nothing but the drive and your passphrase.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://copyshelter.com/privacy