I’ll be honest — I didn’t even know I needed a backup extractor until the day I deleted a conversation I shouldn’t have. Like, gone-gone. The worst part? My last iCloud backup was weeks old, but luckily I’d been backing up my iPhone to my Windows 11 PC using iTunes every month.
That’s when I found Any2Extract — a small, simple piece of software from TunesBro that promised to let me browse my iTunes backup and pull out just what I wanted. No full restore, no data loss, no drama. Sounded too good to be true — but surprisingly, it wasn’t.
💡 What Any2Extract Actually Does
If you’ve ever backed up your iPhone using iTunes, you already have a ton of data sitting on your computer — text messages, contacts, call logs, WhatsApp chats, photos, Safari history, notes, and more.
Normally, Apple doesn’t let you look inside those backups without restoring the whole thing, which can overwrite everything currently on your phone.
Any2Extract basically opens that door. It scans your iTunes backup, shows you everything inside, and lets you preview and export individual items — whether it’s a single photo, a few text messages, or your full contact list.
⚙️ My Experience Using It
The setup was laughably easy — I just installed it, launched the app, and boom — it automatically detected all my iTunes backups.
Once I clicked my latest backup, I could see different categories like Messages, Photos, Contacts, WhatsApp, Call History, and even Safari bookmarks.
I went straight to Messages. Within a minute, there it was — the deleted conversation I thought I’d never see again. I was able to preview every message, export it as a clean HTML file, and even print it out for reference.
It’s not one of those bloated “smart recovery” tools that try to sell you cloud storage or push ads. It just does one thing really well — extracts your data from iTunes backups cleanly and clearly.
🧾 What I Like
✅ Super clean interface — everything’s labeled clearly and easy to find.
✅ Works on both Windows and macOS.
✅ Handles encrypted backups if you know the password.
✅ You can preview data before exporting — huge plus.
✅ Exports in readable formats (HTML, CSV, VCF, etc.) so you can actually use what you recover.
⚠️ What Could Be Better
- It doesn’t recover directly from the device — you need an iTunes backup.
- Large backups can take a few minutes to load (mine was 18GB).
- The free trial only lets you preview — you need a license to export files.
🧠 Final Thoughts
If you’re the kind of person who backs up your iPhone with iTunes but never really knows what’s inside those backups — Any2Extract is the tool that makes them actually useful. It’s simple, transparent, and just works.
I used it to recover deleted messages, but honestly, it’s just as good for exporting contacts, browsing old WhatsApp chats, or saving photos that never made it to iCloud.
For me, it turned a “lost data panic” moment into a “wow, that was easy” one.
If you ever find yourself needing to restore iphone from itunes backup without actually restoring it, Any2Extract is probably the best way to do it.