OK, for those of you who are about to ignore my earlier advice saying that you should wait a short while before upgrading to iOS9, PLEASE read the following!

If you have to, absolutely, must install iOS9 as soon as it releases there’s one thing you need to do before you go ahead. The chances are that everything will be absolutely fine and you won’t reget it, but on the off chance that you are unlucky (and Apple have released some duff updates previously – see this for example), you’ll be happy you’ve followed my advice below.

Make sure you have at least one good backup of your device today. See below for more details

Carry on with the update if you really insist (but I’d rather you waited 72 hours, honestly)

How to backup

The best way to backup is by connecting to a computer and using iTunes. If you don’t have a computer, do you have a friend that does? Failing that you’re reliant on iCloud (good luck with that!).

1. Connect your iOS device to the computer with your lightning cable.
2. Just below the play controls you’ll see an icon for your device, click on that.
3. Go to the summary section and check that your iPad is backing up to this computer.
4. Select ‘Encrypt local backup’ and enter a password you will remember. This ensures that all confidential data (health data and passwords being the prime examples). Miss this step out and when you restore you’ll be prompted for all your passwords again.
5. Click backup now.

That’ll take 5-15 minutes or so depending on the capacity of your device, but it’ll mean that if the upgrade goes wrong, you’ll be able to go backwards. Trust me, you’ll thank me if it happens, and it’s not a major nuisance to do (to be honest you’d be well served to do this on a regular basis anyway, just in case your phone is lost/stolen/broken).