iMazing 3.6.5 — Mac version

Runs on El Capitan through latest macOS, Intel and Apple Silicon

It runs on anything from OS X 10.11 El Capitan upwards, including the latest macOS releases. The app works natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs without Rosetta fuss.

Does it handle wireless backups?

Yes, you can set up automatic wireless backups from an iPhone or iPad to your Mac. No cable needed once it's configured, which keeps your data safe without you having to remember.

Drag music, messages, voicemail, and bookmarks off the phone

You can copy music and media files back and forth without iTunes. It also grabs text messages with their attachments, voicemail messages saved as audio, and even transfers Safari bookmarks without touching iCloud.

Browse and drag files like a USB stick for documents and app data

The file system access lets you browse and drag files on and off the device as if it were a USB stick. Handy for grabbing documents, game scores, or app data that's usually locked away.

How iMazing stacks up against other Mac apps

Apple's own Finder (and iTunes on older macOS) does the basics — sync, backup, restore. iMazing sits a layer above that. Where Finder gives you an all-or-nothing backup, iMazing lets you browse inside it, pull out a single conversation thread, or export just your call history as a CSV. Finder can't do that.

Then there's AnyTrans. It's probably the closest cousin. Both apps move music, messages and photos without iTunes, and both offer some kind of wireless backup. iMazing's backup browser runs deeper though — you can dip into app-specific folders, game save data, and even shared app group containers that AnyTrans tends to skip past. AnyTrans feels more like a media shuttle; iMazing feels like a full control panel.

iExplorer is the lightweight option. It's quick for dragging photos and music off an iPhone, and it runs on older Macs without complaint. But it doesn't do automatic wireless backups, and its message export is more limited — you get conversations, but not with the attachment handling iMazing manages. If you only need to rescue photos from a water-damaged phone once, iExplorer is fine. If you want a long-term backup strategy that works every night while your phone charges across the room, iMazing pulls ahead.

Where iMazing really carves out its own space is in the little things: exporting voicemails as playable audio files, saving Safari bookmarks, pulling ePub and PDF books out of Apple Books and onto a computer. Those are niche until you need them, and then they're the whole reason you installed the app.

Saturday morning: moving only messages and photos to a new iPhone

Imagine it's Saturday morning. You've just unwrapped a new iPhone and you want everything from your old one moved across — selectively. Not the bloated app collection you accumulated over three years. Just the messages, the photos from the last six months, and a handful of apps where you've actually got save data you care about.

You open iMazing and plug the old phone in via USB. It appears in the sidebar almost instantly, with its battery percentage and storage bar sitting there like a dashboard. You click Back Up and it runs a full, local backup to your Mac — encrypted, so all your health data and saved passwords come along. That takes about six minutes on a phone with 80GB used.

While that runs, you connect the new phone to a different USB port. Both devices appear side by side in the iMazing window. When the backup finishes, you select the old phone and click Transfer to Another Device. A panel slides in asking what you want to move. You tick Messages, Photos, and then drill into the Apps section to pick only three games where your progress matters. You leave off the two hundred other apps.

You hit transfer. A progress bar crawls along. About fifteen minutes later, your new phone pings — the messages are there, threaded exactly as they were, with the photos and videos attached to conversations intact. The three games open with your save files recognised. Nothing else was pushed across. No duplicate contacts, no forgotten podcast subscriptions.

Before you put the old phone in a drawer, you open the File System section in iMazing and browse to the voice memos folder. You drag all twenty-three recordings straight onto your desktop. They land as m4a files, dated and named. That's it. The old phone gets wiped, and you spend the afternoon setting up the new one from a clean start, minus the years of clutter.

Before you install, here's what to know

Finder sync and iCloud backups keep running untouched

It doesn't. iMazing works alongside whatever Apple gives you. Your Finder sync settings stay untouched. If you normally back up to iCloud, that carries on. iMazing just adds an extra local backup option — one you can actually browse. Think of it as a parallel track, not a replacement.

Each backup mirrors your phone's storage; archive to an external drive

Roughly the same as your phone's used storage, per backup. If your iPhone holds 128GB and you keep three snapshots, that's a chunk of your Mac's drive. You can archive older backups to an external drive through the app's preferences, or delete them inside iMazing itself. It doesn't hoard forever unless you tell it to.

Pulls data from a phone stuck on the Apple logo over USB

Sometimes, yes — if the phone still mounts over USB. iMazing can pull data from a device that's stuck on the Apple logo, as long as it shows up in the sidebar. It's not magic, but it's rescued messages and photos from phones that Finder wouldn't even recognise. If the phone is completely dead, you're down to whatever backup you already made.

Does iMazing Chatbot phone home with my data?

The chatbot link added in version 3.6.5 sits in the toolbar as a convenience, but the core app works entirely offline. Backups stay on your Mac. No account is needed to browse, export, or restore. The chatbot is optional assistance, not a required service.

One checkbox for encrypted backups saves Wi‑Fi passwords and health data

Skipping the encrypted backup option. It's one checkbox during setup, and people breeze past it. Without encryption, your backup won't include saved Wi‑Fi passwords, health data, or your keychain. If you ever restore from that backup, you'll spend an hour re-entering passwords. Tick the box and store the password somewhere safe.

Dragging files directly out of a backup without understanding the folder structure. iMazing's file system view shows raw iOS directories with names like 3B4E4B2A-…. Beginners sometimes grab a random folder expecting photos, then wonder why nothing opens. Use the dedicated Photos or Messages sections instead — they parse the database properly and export usable files with real names.

Assuming an iMazing backup replaces iCloud. It doesn't sync between devices. A local backup is a snapshot on your Mac. If your Mac's drive fails and you never copied the backup elsewhere, it's gone. Pair iMazing's wireless automatic backups with an external drive archive, or keep iCloud running alongside it for off-site peace of mind.

Restoring an entire backup onto a new phone when you only wanted messages. The Transfer to Another Device tool offers granular selection for a reason. Going for the full restore dumps everything — old settings, stale app data, the lot — onto a fresh device. Take five minutes to tick only what you need. Your new phone will feel cleaner for it.

Ignoring the unified logs export. A niche feature, but if you're troubleshooting an app that keeps crashing, exporting the logs straight from iMazing's view saves you a trip through Xcode. Version 3.6.5 added one-click export of the complete log archive. Beginners rarely notice it, but it's gold when a developer asks "can you send me the crash logs?"

• Recognises iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone Duo, Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4
• Exports complete log archives straight from the unified logs view
• Adds a link to iMazing Chatbot in the main window toolbar

• OS X 10.11 or later
• Apple Silicon and Intel Macs