How to delete old iPhone backups on your Mac

Big wins · 4 min read

If your Mac storage is full, old device backups are one of the biggest — and easiest — wins. Each iPhone or iPad backup can be 10 to 50 GB, and backups for devices you no longer own are pure wasted space.

Wait — is it safe to delete a backup?

Yes, as long as you don't need that particular backup. Deleting a backup on your Mac does not affect your iPhone or the data on it — your phone is completely fine. You just lose the ability to restore your device to that older saved point. If your phone also backs up to iCloud (most do), you're doubly covered.

The manual way

On modern macOS you can manage these in the Finder:

1. Connect your device, or open Finder.
2. In Finder, open the General tab for your device and click Manage Backups, or go to the backups folder directly: in Finder press ⌘⇧G and paste ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup.
3. You'll see folders with long random names — these are your backups.
4. Delete the ones you don't need (the dates and device info can be hard to read here).

The tricky part: those folders have cryptic names, so it's hard to tell which backup is which — and which is safe to remove.

The easy way

Storage Bee finds your device backups and shows them in plain language — the device name, model, iOS version, last backup date, and size — so you know exactly what you're removing. Pick the old ones and they go to the Trash, fully reversible. With one click you can often reclaim tens of gigabytes.

Related: What is "System Data"? · Why is my Mac full?

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