What to Back Up Before an iPhone Factory Reset
Short answer
A backup alone is not enough. Before erasing, confirm the backup completed with today's date, export your authenticator app codes, note any app whose data lives only on the device, and know your Apple ID password — Activation Lock will demand it after the erase. Erasing is irreversible, so verify the backup timestamp before you tap anything on the Erase screen.
On this page
Most people prepare for a reset by making a backup and stopping there. The backup is the easy part. What causes the bad afternoon is the handful of things no backup contains, discovered an hour after the phone has been wiped.
Erasing an iPhone is irreversible. There is no undo, no recycle bin and no Apple-side copy of what was on the device. Everything below should be done before you go anywhere near Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone.
Start with the backup, and verify it
Make one, then confirm it exists. Those are two separate steps and the second is the one people skip.
iCloud: Settings → [your name] → iCloud → iCloud Backup → Back Up Now. When it finishes, read the line underneath. It must show today’s date and a time within the last few minutes. If it fails, stop and fix that first — why an iPhone won’t back up to iCloud covers the usual causes.
Computer: connect the phone, open Finder on macOS Catalina and later, or the Apple Devices app on Windows. Select the device, choose Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this computer, and tick Encrypt local backup.
That encryption tick matters more than anything else on this page. An unencrypted local backup silently omits saved passwords, Wi-Fi credentials and all Health and Fitness data. Tick the box, set a password, and write that password down somewhere you will still have it. Without that password the backup cannot be restored at all, by you or by anyone.
Doing both is cheap insurance and takes about twenty minutes in total.
What a backup does not contain
| Not in the backup | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Authenticator app codes | Excluded by the app for security | Export seeds or move codes first |
| Photos, if iCloud Photos is on | Synced separately, not backed up | Confirm the sync finished |
| Apple Pay cards | Tied to the secure element | Re-add after setup, takes minutes |
| Face ID / Touch ID data | Never leaves the device | Re-enrol after setup |
| Saved passwords, unencrypted local backup | Encryption omitted | Tick Encrypt local backup |
| Some app data, developer’s choice | App opted out | Check each app’s own export |
Authenticator codes are the one that ruins the day
If you use an authenticator app for two-factor codes on your email, bank or work accounts, deal with this before anything else. Several authenticator apps deliberately exclude their data from device backups, on the reasonable grounds that a backup is a weaker security boundary than the device.
The consequence is that a reset locks you out of every account protected by those codes, and recovering each one individually is slow and sometimes requires identity verification.
Your options, in order of preference:
- Turn on the app’s own cloud sync, if it has one, and confirm it has actually synced.
- Transfer to the new device using the app’s built-in transfer or export flow, which many support through a QR code.
- Print or write down the recovery codes each service gave you when you set up two-factor. Most people have these in a drawer and have forgotten.
Do not rely on being able to receive an SMS instead. Plenty of services no longer offer SMS as a fallback.
Photos, if iCloud Photos is on
When iCloud Photos is enabled, your library is not in the device backup at all. It is in iCloud, syncing separately, and the backup is correct to exclude it.
The risk is a library that has not finished uploading. Open Photos, scroll to the very bottom of the Library view, and look for a status line. “Uploading X items” means you are not ready. Leave it on Wi-Fi and power until it says the library is up to date.
If iCloud Photos is off, your photos are in the backup, and a large library makes the backup correspondingly large and slow.
The checklist for everything else
Work through this before you erase:
- Know your Apple ID password. Activation Lock will ask for it when the phone restarts. Not knowing it turns a reset into a locked brick, and recovery takes days — see how to reset your Apple ID password.
- Note which apps keep data only on the device. Offline notes apps, local recipe collections, games with local saves, voice recorders, anything without a cloud account. Export each one through its own share or export function.
- Save your WhatsApp chats. WhatsApp backs up to iCloud separately from the device backup. Open WhatsApp → Settings → Chats → Chat Backup → Back Up Now and wait for it to finish.
- Export anything in Files that is stored locally. Files → Browse → On My iPhone holds documents that are not in iCloud Drive. Move them to iCloud Drive or a computer.
- Check your Health data. It is only in an encrypted local backup or in iCloud if Health sync is enabled under Settings → [your name] → iCloud.
- Screenshot anything configuration-shaped. Wi-Fi passwords you only have on the phone, VPN settings, eSIM details, Shortcuts you built.
- Deauthorise anything tied to the install. A few professional apps and some banking apps have per-device activation limits.
- Note your eSIM arrangement. Erasing can remove an eSIM. Check with your carrier how to reinstall it, and do not erase the phone the morning you need to travel.
Erasing, once the checklist is clear
This step is permanent. Do not proceed until the backup shows today’s date.
The correct route is Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Erase All Content and Settings. iOS asks for your device passcode and then your Apple ID password, which is how it turns off Find My and clears Activation Lock.
Use this route rather than erasing from a computer. Erasing through Finder without signing out first leaves the phone locked to your Apple ID, and anyone setting it up afterwards, including you, needs those credentials.
If you are selling or giving the phone away, also remove it from your device list afterwards: Settings → [your name], scroll to the device, tap it, and choose Remove from Account.
Realistic expectations
A prepared reset takes about ninety minutes end to end: twenty for the backups, twenty for the checklist, five for the erase, and the rest for the restore and re-downloading apps. Apps come back from the App Store rather than from the backup, so a phone with 100 apps takes a while on a modest connection.
What will not come back exactly is the arrangement of small things: some app logins, notification permissions, Apple Pay cards, Face ID. Expect an hour of tidying afterwards regardless of how good the backup was. That is normal and not a sign anything went wrong.