[dylan604]

I thought the same thing about Time Machine. It works really well with a local laptop that I plug in from time to time for this to work. However, is it considered Time Machine when an iDevice backs itself up to the cloud?

Mail is definitely a local app, even if they did screw the pooch pretty badly with that gmail bug they had a few years ago.

[Someone]

“However, is it considered Time Machine when an iDevice backs itself up to the cloud?”

No. Strictly speaking, iCloud doesn’t even do backups; it syncs data. Difference is that, with backups, you can get a copy back if you accidentally throw away a file. You typically also have multiple ‘old’ copies.

iWork apps (1) kind-of have backups in the form of versions that get synced to the cloud (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205411), but I think that’s implemented independently from iCloud’s syncing (You can use it to have multiple versions of a document locally, too)

(1) Third-party apps can use this, too (https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...), but I wouldn’t know how commonly this is used

[wlesieutre]

> No. Strictly speaking, iCloud doesn’t even do backups; it syncs data

There’s literally a switch called “iCloud Backup” in Settings though. This isn’t a per-app data sync, it’s the full device restore that you can use if your phone gets stolen, dropped in the ocean, etc.

Although you should consider not using it for privacy reasons and running backups to a local machine instead, since last we heard Apple has the encryption keys and will happily hand the entire contents your phone to law enforcement given a warrant.