Backing up iPhone to Mac over VPN?
reddit / selfhosted

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nooneelsehasmyname · 2023-12-22 16:25

I have been trying to follow best practices for backups of all my
devices: servers, NASs, computers, and of course my iPhone. I'm not
going to pay for iCloud storage to backup my 256GB iPhone, so I have
to back it up to my Mac. My Mac is then backed-up to my NAS, etc, so
at first glance this seems an acceptable solution to backup my iPhone.

But there is one detail: my iPhone only performs backups to my Mac
when they are both in the same local network, so when I'm traveling
without my Mac, my iPhone is not backed-up.

So this got me thinking. Whenever I am traveling without my Mac, my
Mac is at home connected to my home network. I have both Tailscale on
my iPhone and Mac, and Wireguard on my home router. I can turn on
Wireguard on my iPhone, for example, and now for all intents and
purposes it's as if my iPhone is on my home network (where my Mac also
is, physically). However, my iPhone does not back up to my Mac in this
case.

Why is it so, and is there a solution to this, so I can back up my
iPhone over a VPN?