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Notes on keeping your iPhone and iPad messages: where they should live, how to preserve a record, and what the app does and doesn't do.
A backup and an archive are not the same thing
A backup mirrors the phone you have today. An archive keeps a growing record of what you had over time, and only one of them still has the conversation you go looking for years later.
Keep your own copy of your text messages
Cloud backups are great for restoring a lost phone. For a record you might need years from now, it's worth also keeping a copy you own, on your own computer.