Preventing iTunes to automatically backup your iDevice

I don't know about you, but I get very annoyed when I have to wait for iTunes to finish the backup of my iPhone or iPad. There is no option in iTunes to disable automatic backup.
Follow along this post explain how to accomplish that.

• Quit iTunes
• Open Terminal
• Type or copy and paste the line below

defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true

That prevent backup to happen, but allows you to manually do it at your own will 'ctrl clicking' the device icon, like in the picture

To revert the original backup behavior

defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

or completely get rid of the key AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled added with defaults write

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled

What about if you don't even want to be able to perform a manual backup?

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true

To revert the original backup behavior

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

or completely get rid of the key DeviceBackupsDisabled added with defaults write

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled


Footnote
I tested this hack on a Macintosh with iTunes 10.5.2 and worked as expected with iPhone 4, iPad and iPad2.