iPhone broken or won’t turn on: how to get your photos back
Whether your photos survive depends on choices made before the phone broke.
In short
If iCloud Photos was on, your photos are already in iCloud: sign in at iCloud.com/photos or on another device to see them. Otherwise, look for an iCloud or computer backup to restore onto a working iPhone. Photos that lived only on the broken phone depend on getting it working again, and a vault app restores only from its own backup and secret.
Key takeaways
- iCloud.com/photos shows your iCloud Photos in any browser.
- A repaired iPhone may come back erased, ready to restore from a backup.
- A vault restores only with its backup and its recovery phrase.
First: what was already off the phone
- iCloud Photos. If it was on, your library is in iCloud. Open iCloud.com/photos in any web browser and sign in, or open Photos on a Mac or iPad signed in to the same account.
- An iCloud backup. If iCloud Photos was off, an iCloud backup may include the photos and videos in your library.
- A computer backup, made with the Finder on a Mac or on a Windows PC.
- Photos you sent or shared — in messages, emails or shared albums — also exist with the people and services you sent them to.
If the phone still turns on
Back it up straight away, to iCloud or to a computer, and check that iCloud Photos has finished syncing. Every photo you get off the phone now is one you won’t need to rescue later.
Restoring onto a working iPhone
- Turn on the new or newly erased iPhone. At the Hello screen, begin setup.
- Tap Set Up Manually, then Restore from iCloud Backup — or connect it to the computer holding your backup, select it in the Finder, click Trust, then Restore from this backup.
- If the computer backup is encrypted, enter its password.
Before and after a repair
- Apple asks you to back up before service, if you still can, and warns that a device might come back erased.
- If you set the returned iPhone up as new and later want your old iCloud backup, Apple says to erase it and restore as soon as possible: new backups made in the meantime can overwrite the earlier ones.
- Apple and Apple Authorized Service Providers will never ask for your Apple Account password or device passcode. For some software support you may be asked to enter it yourself — Apple says to stay present while the technician has access.
If the phone can’t be brought back and nothing was synced or backed up, photos that existed only on it may not be recoverable.
Vault apps
A vault that encrypts properly can’t be opened by a repair shop, by Apple or by the app’s developer — which also means it can’t be rescued from a dead phone. What matters is its backup. Latent backs each vault up to your iCloud, encrypted, and restores it on a new iPhone signed in to the same iCloud account, with the vault’s nine-word recovery phrase.