Note:<\/i><\/b> This article was first published on 6 March 2025 and is republished now to help readers who have bought new iPhones to migrate their data.<\/i><\/p>\n
Congratulations on your new iPhone or iPad. You’ve opened the box, peeled off the wrapping, and now you are faced with the task of setting it up.<\/p>\n
There are two ways you could go about this. You could either set it up as a new device, which means you bring nothing over from your old device and start with a clean slate. Or, you could transfer data over from your old device to the new one. For obvious reasons, the latter is preferred by most users.<\/p>\n
If you are transferring data from your old device to a new one, there are two main ways:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Restore from an iCloud Backup<\/b><\/li>\n
- Transfer Directly from an iPhone\/iPad<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Most readers go for the iCloud Backup because it\u2019s fast and convenient, but transferring directly from your old iPhone or iPad is better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For reasons that are not completely clear (since Apple never explained why), using the device-to-device method moves most of all logins over to the new device<\/b>, meaning you don\u2019t have to log in to your apps again. Obviously, you\u2019ll need to set up your security tokens for your banking apps, but most other apps will work as they did on your old device. This is not the case if you use the iCloud Backup method, where you\u2019ll often have to log in to your apps again.<\/p>\n
\n Downloading from iCloud and a device-to-device transfer are the two main ways you can transfer data from your old device to your new one. <\/p>\n
Photo: Apple<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
However, the device-to-device method has one major drawback: you cannot use both devices when the transfer is ongoing, and the process can take a while<\/b>. If this is unacceptable, restoring from the iCloud Backup is the better option since your older device is unaffected and remains operational.<\/p>\n
The time it takes for the device-to-device transfer depends on the amount of data you have. It\u2019s hard to say how quickly or slowly the transfer happens because there\u2019s no progress bar or status readout when it\u2019s happening. In my experience, on my phone with over 700GB of data, the process took about 2.5 hours.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll concede that that is a long time to go without access to your phone \u2013 especially for folks who rely on it for work \u2013 but I think the convenience of having the new phone running as closely as possible to your old one is worth it. My advice, if you want to use this method, is to do it at the end of the day and leave your two devices side by side and plugged into the charger. It should be done by the morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
- Transfer Directly from an iPhone\/iPad<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n