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Here's the dilemma: My nephew decided to start a new game on GTA vice city which wiped out my hard worked progress. I have the progress in an old backup from a year ago. However, I would like to not lose the data I have from other apps.

What I have: iPhone5 iOS 9.3.1

What I have tried: iExplorer and iPhoneBackupBrowser

Story of my attempts: I have found the GTA data in iExplorer and have saved to my desktop. However, the app doesn't have iTunes file sharing enabled so I cannot replace the existing files in the "documents" for the app from the backup. I have also tried to downgrade the iPhone to iOS 8.3 but as the ipsw is unsigned, I cannot downgrade.

So: What is the best way to achieve this? I could restore the phone from the old backup and then backup only the GTA app to iCloud, the restore the phone from the recent backup and then sync with the cloud. However, I feel that it will simply wipe out all other apps and only restore the one selected app. Is that correct? What other options do I have? Could I merge the backups somehow? Could I do this via iTunes sync where the data of the correct GTA savegame is synced and replaces the unwanted data?

Could I swap the files in the iTunes backup folder with the relevant files from the historical iTunes backup folder and then restore the modified backup to the phone?

Any pointers in the right direction will help.

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I found the answer with iMazing https://imazing.com .

  • What I did was copy the entire iTunes backup folder from my USB drive to the iTunes backup folder in my machine.
  • Then I ran the iMazing App and went to the iOS App (app has to be installed) in the connected phone.
  • Then I right clicked the iOS App and select extract.
  • At this point, I selected extract from current backup (which would be the historical backup containing the app data I want to restore) and saved the extract file to my desktop.
  • Once done, I select "manage apps > restore" from the bottom of the screen and select the file I just extracted.
  • Phone restarted after restore and it was all restored perfectly!

If you get stuck, they are very responsive on twitter, which is where I got help to do this.

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  • This worked for me too. I didn't even need to unlock the full licensed version. Thanks!
    – MultiRRomero
    Aug 6, 2016 at 15:41
  • I tried this with 1 app I really wanted to keep the gameplay on. without unlocking the full version, it worked flawlessly. Probably the best app I have come across for backing up app data (better than iexplorer)
    – user201359
    Sep 15, 2016 at 9:43
  • I also had luck with iMazing, although I had to purchase it before I could restore an individual app. In addition, I had to try the restoration process a couple of times; the first attempt returned an error. According to that error, as of iOS 8.3, an app's developer has to explicitly allow "file sharing" in order for a restore to work. (See details here.) I tried again after turning the app off in iOS's iCloud settings, and the restore worked. Not sure this was due the new iCloud adjustment or something else, but my data is back.
    – EJ Mak
    May 29, 2017 at 2:55

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