What to Do With a Deceased Parent's Phone Photos and Videos

When a parent dies, their phone is often one of the last things anyone thinks to deal with — and one of the most precious. Thousands of photos and videos, often never backed up or shared with anyone, sitting in a device that may lock itself permanently if you don''t act quickly.

Here''s a practical guide to what to do, in roughly the order you should do it.

First: don''t let the phone lock you out

If you have access to the phone right now — unlocked, or with a PIN you know — don''t wait. Certain scenarios can make it much harder to access later:

• iPhones with Face ID or Touch ID may stop accepting biometrics after a restart and require the PIN
• Some phones automatically restart after extended inactivity, triggering a mandatory PIN entry
• If the phone runs out of battery and you don''t know the PIN, recovery becomes significantly more complex

If the phone is currently accessible: plug it in, keep it from restarting, and start backing up the photos as soon as you reasonably can.

Getting into a locked phone

If the phone is locked and you don''t have the PIN, your options depend on the platform.

iPhone

Apple does not provide a backdoor into locked devices, even for next-of-kin. Your options are:

• Submit a Digital Legacy request if your parent had set you up as a Legacy Contact before they died (this is a relatively new Apple feature many people haven''t used)
• Contact Apple with a death certificate and court order — this process exists but is slow and not guaranteed
• Check if photos are backed up to iCloud — if you know their Apple ID and password, or have their trusted device, you may be able to access photos through iCloud.com without unlocking the physical phone

Android

Similar constraints apply, though the specific process varies by manufacturer. Google Photos backups, if enabled, are typically accessible via the Google account credentials.

Practical note: If the phone is locked and you don''t have credentials, a reputable data recovery service may be able to help — though this is a last resort, usually expensive, and not always successful.

Backing up what''s on the phone

Once you have access, back up everything before anything else — before you change settings, before you delete anything, before you transfer the SIM.

For iPhone

• Connect to a computer and use Finder (Mac) or iTunes (Windows) to make a full encrypted backup
• Or enable iCloud backup in Settings if it isn''t already, and wait for it to complete over Wi-Fi

For Android

• Use Google Photos to back up — if not already enabled, turn it on and let it sync fully before doing anything else
• Or connect to a computer and copy the DCIM folder directly

Don''t rely on the phone itself as the only copy. Phones get lost, damaged, or accidentally factory-reset during SIM transfers.

Dealing with cloud backups that already exist

Many people have years of photos automatically backed up somewhere they forgot about — or never knew existed. Before spending time recovering photos from the physical device, check:

• iCloud Photos — if they had an iPhone and paid for iCloud storage, there may be years of photos already there
• Google Photos — free and automatic for many Android users; also used by many iPhone users who downloaded the app
• Amazon Photos — comes free with Prime, and many Prime members have unknowingly been backing up photos for years
• Facebook/Instagram — many older photos may exist only as social media posts; these can be downloaded via the platform''s data export tools

Recovering cloud backups is usually faster and more complete than working from the physical device.

The HEIC problem (and how to avoid it)

Modern iPhones save photos in a format called HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container). It looks fine on Apple devices but often won''t open on Windows computers, and can cause problems when sharing or uploading to other platforms.

If you''re going to be sharing your parent''s photos with family members or uploading them somewhere for safekeeping, convert to JPEG first. On a Mac, you can do this directly via Airdrop or export settings in the Photos app. On Windows, Microsoft''s HEIC Image Extensions (free in the Microsoft Store) allows you to open HEIC files; converting in bulk is easier with a dedicated converter.

Organizing what you find

Once you have everything backed up, the instinct is to sort it all immediately. Resist that if you''re in the early stages of grief — it can be an unexpectedly emotional process and it doesn''t need to happen right away.

When you''re ready, a few principles make the task more manageable:

Start with a rough date sort, not content. Most photo apps can sort by date automatically. This creates a rough chronological structure before you start deciding what goes where.

Don''t delete anything yet. What looks like a blurry duplicate in the first pass often turns out to be the only photo of a particular moment. Do a first pass of organizing and sorting before you permanently remove anything.

Separate "share with family" from "archive." Not everything needs to be shared immediately. Some photos are for the broader family; others are more private. It''s fine to have one folder that''s your personal archive and a separate set you pull from to share.

Sharing what you find with the rest of the family

Once you''ve backed up and done a first sort, the question becomes how to share photos and videos with siblings, cousins, and other family members — especially ones who may have photos of their own to add.

Email doesn''t work well for this. Videos are too large, HEIC files don''t open properly, and a chain of reply-all attachments quickly becomes impossible to track.

Options that work better:

• A shared folder (Google Drive, iCloud Shared Album, Dropbox) gives everyone access to download, but doesn''t handle uploading from multiple family members particularly well
• A group chat (WhatsApp, iMessage) is easy but turns into a long scroll that''s hard to revisit later, and most platforms compress videos
• A private memory-sharing space lets everyone upload directly from their own phones, keeps original quality, and gives you a permanent organized archive rather than a scrolling feed — useful if you want something that stays accessible years from now, not just in the weeks after the loss

One thing worth doing now, even if nothing else

If you do nothing else from this list today: make sure at least one full backup of the phone''s photos exists somewhere other than the phone itself, in a format you can actually open.

Everything else can wait. That one thing can''t.

If you''re looking for a private, organized place to gather your parent''s photos alongside ones other family members have — a shared family archive rather than a group chat — [Memories for Keepsake](https://memoriesforkeepsake.com) is built for exactly that. No public page, no account required to contribute, and it handles HEIC files from iPhones without any conversion needed.