Apple released the iOS 9 public beta on Thursday. Before you hurry to install it, you should backup your iOS device using iTunes. Why back up? Beta software is bound to be buggy and may suffer from performance issues. If you find you cannot live with the iOS 9 beta and want to downgrade to a current, stable version of iOS, you’ll need a working backup to restore from.

You cannot restore your iOS device from a backup in iCloud, so when you create a backup using iTunes you must also archive it to create a local copy.

Here is how you archive an iOS backup using iTunes:

• Check that you are using the latest version of iTunes.
• Connect your iOS device to your computer and launch iTunes.
• Click on Summary in the sidebar, and then click on Back Up Now.
• Once the backup has completed, click on iTunes > Preferences > Devices.
• Find the backup for you device and Control-click that backup. Now select Archive.

This will create a local archived copy of the backup, from which you can restore your device should you need to.

With an archived backup done, you can install the iOS 9 public beta.

Screenshot: SiliconANGLE via Apple.com