How to move your data to a new iPhone 14

You can set up a new iPhone the same way, a completely new iPhone with no previous data like documents or settings like email accounts. This is what you need to do if it’s your first smartphone, and you might want to do it later.

However, it’s not what you need to do if you’re coming from Android. Since 2018, Apple has got you covered there with its Android app Move to iOS.

But most of the time, when you switch to a new iPhone, you want it to have all of your data, all of your stuff that was on the old one. Since this ranges from photos to credit cards in wallet, and from a hundred options like focus modes and ringtones, you need help.

Broadly speaking, you prepare the old phone — by backing up the data on it, for example — and transfer that data during the setup of the next one.

If you paired an Apple Watch with your old iPhone, unpair it now. Trust us, you can get into knots if you haven’t unpaired it first, say, give away the old iPhone.

Also, you want your watch to work with your new iPhone, and that means all of the watch’s data survives the transfer too. And the only way to backup your Apple Watch data is to unpair it from your iPhone.

The Apple Watch is backed up regularly anyway, but when you unpair it, you force it to take a backup at that moment. Depending on whether you have music and podcasts stored on the watch, it may take a few minutes, but it’s important.

follow that AppleInsider Guide to backing up your iPhone for all the details and especially to choose between backing up to your Mac or to iCloud.

The short version is that both are now so similar that you probably won’t notice any difference. But the even shorter version is that you should backup both.

The best way is what Apple tells you to do, a method called Quick Start.

Turn on the new iPhone and put it next to your old one. Just as iPhones recognize AirPods, for example, the two phones will recognize each other.

Your old iPhone will ask if you want to use your current Apple ID to set up the new iPhone. It is.

If it doesn’t and you want to use a different Apple ID on the new iPhone, make absolutely sure you want to. Because you can’t merge Apple IDs later, and you’d better set up this iPhone from scratch right away.

Next, it will ask you to confirm that this new iPhone is the one you want to transfer to, in a very Apple Watch-like way. Just like introduced with the Watch, you need to hold the new iPhone so that its camera can see an animation on the old one’s display.

When this is done you will get a prompt on the old phone that says Complete on the new iPhone.

Next you will be prompted to tap Transfer data from iPhone. Apple assumes this is what you want, and it may be, but since you’ve recently taken a backup you have other options.

Actually tap the words Other options. When you do this, you have the option of transferring your data over your current iCloud backup or from a backup on your Mac.

If you have backed up on your Mac, connect the new iPhone to it and choose whether to transfer data this way. This is the fastest, although you might only notice this if you have a lot of data to transfer.

Or you can choose to transfer from iCloud backup. In this case you will be presented with a list of recent backups and of course you should select the most recent one.

Alternatively, you can just tap on it Transfer data from iPhone. In this case, the new iPhone will directly copy the data from the old one over your Wi-Fi network.

You might need to transfer a lot of data, and if so, don’t expect it to be quick. If you’re going from a 1TB iPhone 13 Pro Max to a 1TB iPhone 14 Pro and you’ve filled that space, do it overnight.

Whatever method you choose to transfer your data, the result is that your new iPhone has everything your old one had. It might have taken a while for all the data to come across, but you can now use the new iPhone just like the old one.

All you have to do is use it to pay for your Apple Watch as well.