As you likely know by now, iOS and iPadOS device backups are handled differently in macOS Big Sur and MacOS Catalina compared to Mojave and earlier that ran iTunes. Instead of iTunes for device management, device syncing, backups, and restores are all handled in the Finder now instead.

We’ve already explained how to go about creating a backup of your iPhone or iPad using Finder, but what about restoring that iOS or iPadOS backup? The hope is that you’ll never need it, but here’s how you go about doing it if you’re using macOS 10.15 or later.

How to…