Now you know exactly where your digital lifeline is hiding. Go ahead and check that your backups are actually there – before you need them.

If you’re an iPhone user who backs up to a Windows PC instead of iCloud, you’ve probably asked this question at some point: “Where did my computer actually save that backup?”

In a typical English installation, that looks like:

Apple doesn’t make these files easy to find on purpose. They are hidden away in a cryptic folder to prevent accidental deletion or tampering. But whether you want to free up disk space, copy the backup to an external drive, or just verify it exists, here is exactly where to look. For Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows 8/8.1, your iPhone backups are stored here: