I recently found my old iPhone 8+ that I haven't used in a couple of years. When I tried to turn it on, it directed me to support.Apple.com/iPhone/restore. I'm concerned that if I follow those instructions, it will erase everything on my device. Is there any way I can connect it to iTunes or another tool without wiping my photos and videos? Those are the most important things to me!
5 Answers
You could attempt to update the phone first, or use 3U tools to get it out of recovery mode. If that doesn’t work, you might want to look into using Apple Configurator 2 on a Mac; it's generally very effective!
Wouldn’t all your data be in your iCloud account? You might want to check that out first.
You might want to log into your iCloud account and see how far back your photos are stored there. Better to be safe!
You might have some luck with iMazing to get it out of the recovery mode, but typically, the device needs to be wiped to get it working again. So keep that in mind!
I’m not sure it’ll work, but you could try opening Image Capture to see if your phone shows up as a source. That's an old-school way to get images off devices before iCloud became popular!
I know it's the same iCloud account I have now, but I'm not sure if it's backed up.