If you’ve been good about backing up your iOS devices to iTunes on your Mac or to iCloud, give yourself a gold star! Both backup destinations are fine (personally, I prefer the seamlessness of backing up to iCloud), but there’s one potential downside to iTunes backups: they can consume a lot of space on your Mac’s drive, which can't be upgraded as easily as iCloud storage. Before removing any backup, confirm you have a current backup and no longer need the older one to recover data. Keep any backup you may still need; Archive prevents later device backups from replacing it, but does not free its disk space. Warning: deleting a backup is irreversible, and Apple says you cannot recover it afterward. On current macOS, connect the iPhone or iPad to your Mac, open Finder, select the device, and choose General > Manage Backups. If prompted, tap Trust on the device and enter its passcode. Right-click a backup and choose Archive to preserve it, or Delete only if you are certain it is no longer needed. On Windows, use Apple Devices > General > Manage Backups. The iTunes reference and illustration are from the original article.