Top 6 Tips to Prepare Your iPhone for Wiping: There will be times when you need to reset your iPhone to its original settings, no matter how well you’ve taken care of it. Either your iPhone has slowed down a lot over time, you’ve been having bugs and software problems lately, or you’re about to sell or give your iPhone to someone else. It doesn’t matter what the reason is for doing a system restart; there are just a few things you need to do first.
This post will tell you everything you need to do to get your iPhone ready for a hard restart.
Top 6 Tips to Prepare Your iPhone for Wiping
You should make sure that all of your data is saved up, that any devices that were connected to your iPhone are no longer paired, and that you are signed out of all of your Apple IDs and other accounts on your iPhone before you wipe it.
1. Save a copy of your iPhone on iCloud or a Mac.
Before you wipe your iPhone, the most important thing you can do is save its important files somewhere else. That way, you can be sure that your data will be safe even after you wipe your iPhone. It’s best to back up your iPhone when you do it on the iPhone itself, since iCloud stores a copy of your iPhone’s information.
- We suggest that you use a computer and follow the steps in the posts linked below for big files.
- You can use iOS settings to back up your iPhone if you have enough room on your iCloud account or are only backing up a part of it.
- To use iCloud to back up your device, open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap on your Apple ID name at the top of Settings.
- When the Apple ID screen comes up, choose iCloud.
- Scroll down to the next screen and tap on iCloud Backup.
- Open up iCloud and back up your iPhone. If you haven’t done this before, turn on the iCloud Backup switch at the top.
- Once it’s turned on, tap Back Up Now to begin backing up your iPhone’s data to iCloud.
- Your iPhone info will now start to be backed up on iCloud. Keep your device linked to Wi-Fi to make sure everything gets uploaded correctly. This screen lets you see at any time how the backup is going.
- As soon as the backup is done, the iCloud Backup screen will show you the last time it was able to sync your iPhone info.
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2. Take your Apple Watch off of your iPhone.
Besides making a backup of your iPhone, you may also need to take care of any other Apple devices that are linked to it before wiping it. If you paired an Apple Watch with an iPhone before wiping the iPhone, you will need to disconnect the Apple Watch from your phone in order to connect it to a different iPhone.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone to disconnect your Apple Watch.
- Tap the “My Watch” tab at the bottom of Watch.
- To get to this screen, go to the top left area and tap Any Watch.
- Tap the “i” button on the right side of the Apple Watch you want to disconnect from your iPhone to disconnect it.
- Tap Unpair Apple Watch on the next screen.
- To confirm the changes, tap on Unpair Apple Watch in the message that shows up at the bottom.
- There may be extra steps you need to take to remove the cellular plan from an Apple Watch that is a GPS + Cellular type that you are unpairing.
- First, your iPhone will make a copy of the data and settings on your Watch. Then, it will delete everything on the Watch.
3. Turn off your iPhone’s “Find My” feature
You will need to turn off the Activation Lock on your iPhone in order to delete everything from it using steps #1 and #2. It will not show up in your iCloud account or the Find My app on other devices after you do this. If you’re selling or giving your iPhone to someone else to use with their own Apple ID, you need to make sure that Activation Lock is turned off.
- To remove the Activation Lock, all you have to do is turn off Find My iPhone on the iPhone you want to erase.
- On your iPhone, open the Settings app.
- There is a name card for your Apple ID at the top of Settings. Tap on it.
- When the Apple ID screen comes up, choose “Find My.”
- You might see “On” next to the Find My iPhone options on the next screen. Tap on Find My iPhone at the top to turn off the Activation Lock on your iPhone.
- Turn off the Find My iPhone switch on the screen that comes up.
- On the next screen, you’ll be asked to enter your Apple ID password. Type in the password, and then tap “Turn Off” to turn off Find My on your device.
- The Activation Lock will be taken off of the chosen iPhone from your Apple ID account once it is turned off.
4. Turn off iMessage and FaceTime
If you want to wipe your iPhone and use a different iPhone or a device made by a company other than Apple, you will need to turn off iMessage and FaceTime on the current device so that you can use them on a different device later. When you wipe your iPhone, it’s important to de-register iMessage because keeping it on may stop other devices from getting SMS/MMS texts.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone to turn off iMessage.
- Choose Messages from the list of settings.
- Turn off the iMessage switch on the Messages screen.
- You can delete your phone number from iMessage if you no longer have access to your iPhone. To do this, go to the Apple SelfSolve page and enter your phone number.
- To turn off FaceTime, go to your iPhone’s Settings app and tap FaceTime.
- In FaceTime, turn off the FaceTime option to remove the iPhone from the list of devices that can use FaceTime to get in touch with you.
5. Close all of your apps.
It’s always a good idea to log out of all apps, even though wiping your iPhone will delete all the accounts you’ve signed into on the apps you have loaded. For those of you who use a lot of apps and have accounts signed in to all of them, this could take some time. But it will make sure that you can use your account on another device without getting locked out.
This is because Apple doesn’t let you sign out of apps from within iOS settings if the app wasn’t made by Apple. For that reason, you will need to open all of these apps and delete all the accounts you’ve signed in to in order to log out of them.
Follow these steps to log out of an Apple app account that you have already signed in to.
- Choose Contacts, Mail, Calendar, Notes, or Reminders from the list when you open the Settings app.
- Press on Accounts on the next screen.
- Choose the non-iCloud account you added to the app in the Accounts screen.
- To log out of the chosen account from the app, go to the next screen and tap on “Delete Account” at the bottom.
- When the message at the bottom shows up, tap on Delete from My iPhone to confirm what you want to do.
- You’ll need to do this again for every account and app you’ve signed in to.
6: Get rid of your iPhone’s eSIM card
If you want to switch to a different device after wiping your iPhone, you might need to move your SIM card from your current iPhone to the new device. Simply remove the SIM card from the SIM card tray on your old iPhone and put it on the new one. This is a pretty easy process if you use a real SIM.
If you use an eSIM, you will need to delete it from the iPhone you are about to delete so that you can use it on a different phone.
- In order to get rid of the eSIM on an iPhone, open the Settings app.
- Pick Mobile Data from the list of settings.
- On the next screen, find the eSIM you want to get rid of and click on it.
- When the screen for the chosen cellular network comes up, tap on Delete eSIM to get rid of the eSIM from your iPhone.
- Similar to how you added this eSIM to your iPhone, you can now add it to something else.
- There you have it. Your iPhone is now ready for a wipe or hard restart.
