New iPhone 13 pro max migration best practices?

I have been an iPhone user for many years. I am going to purchase a new iPhone 13 pro max soon. Can someone point me to any articles on best practices when migrating to a new phone. In the past I have used the simple migration that comes from iCloud backup and restore. I was wondering if anyone had a methodology or best practices like when migrating to a new laptop? Seems silly for me to migrate unused apps onto my new phone? Any tips?

Isn’t this Apple’s “it just works” mantra? You simply log into the new phone during the OOBE and it will walk you through migrating. I think it has built in tech to copy between devices if you simply place them beside each other.

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My apologies for the confusing question. Yes, it just works. That is the problem, I have migrated my low usage apps from phone to phone. When I get a new laptop, I always start clean and then add back applications as needed so I don’t junk up my new laptop. Does anyone have any pro tips on doing this with an iPhone 13?

As far as I know there’s no downside to having unused apps on iOS, unlike on a desktop OS. I think there’s something psychologically appealing, but unless you’re really out of storage space I don’t see any reason to start from a clean slate. I’ve done it every which way over the years, and last month’s direct transfer was the fastest and easiest new device setup I’ve done. It took about two hours start to finish to move from a 12 Pro Max to a 13 Pro, both 256GB (about a third full).

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@ChrisKez Thank you for sharing your context. “Every which way” experience is very useful context and will save me wasted cycles. Thank you for paying it forward.

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Let us know how it goes, and enjoy the new phone! :pray:t3:

Why not clean up the old iPhone and remove those apps you don’t use?

I just moved my wife over from Android to iOS and the Apple sync app worked fine for that, moving data and free apps across. I had to delete a few Samsung apps that we didn’t want, plus Chrome etc. but the process was relatively easy, although I had to log back onto all the apps, as Apple can’t transfer the account details from Android to iOS. The transfer (128GB Galaxy S10 with around 50GB data and a dozen or so apps) took around 20 minutes.

I note that there is also the option to transfer all data from a local iPhone/iPad - you can connect the new iPhone to the old one and it transfers everything over, I would assume that that is faster than using a cloud backup, depending on your internet connection.

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I just moved my wife over from Android to iOS and the Apple sync app worked fine for that, moving data and free apps across.

Interesting. I’m moving a family member from a OnePlus to iPhone 13 soon, hoping to make my remote support job a bit easier :slightly_smiling_face:

Does the Apple migration from Android need the other device to be present or does it just use the Google login and a backup? He’s broken the Android phone :man_facepalming:t2:

It is a direct transfer from the old device to the new one. They have to be within wi-fi distance of each other.

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Ah OK. Thanks. Might work I guess if I restore an old Pixel I have using his account, then migrate to the iPhone.

Face ID is a real pain, setting up a device for someone else. With fingerprints, you can add one of your own to the mix, with Face ID it is harder - although you can set up an alternate appearance, that should work.

I believe, if you Face ID yourself, then delete it when handing it over, all applications that used Face ID to unlock (E.g. password save, banking apps etc.) will have to be manually logged onto once again, then Face ID re-enabled per app, once the new owner has recorded their own face…

I was getting frustrated setting up my wife’s phone (found out about alternate appearance afterwards). In the end, I registered her face and just sat next to her. It would be: tap, tap, turn phone to wife, pling, turn phone back to me, tap, tap, turn to wife, pling, turn to me, tap, tap…

I’m resigned to sitting alongside them doing all the biometric and banking app stuff I think :roll_eyes: But it would be good to get the basics installed before I visit.

To the original poster, does iOS still have that feature to offload apps you don’t use? I agree with the others, no real benefit to setting it up as a blank, new phone.

Yes, it is in Settings > General > iPhone Storage.

One thing I would definitely recommend doing is trying to make a list (that you then store in your password manager) of authentication apps on your iPhone. This includes things like your password manager itself, but also apps like Authy, any banking apps which send you a login code in the app. Then once you have the new phone set up, but before you wipe the old one, open each of the apps and make sure they are set up.

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Exactly. We are keeping my wife’s old Android phone around for a couple of weeks, before resetting it, to ensure everything on the new iPhone is running smoothly.

omg yes. In my haste to set up my new phone I forgot to backup my Google Authenticator app to the cloud and ended up needing to add back all of my accounts once the phone was otherwise set up. I don’t know if other authentication apps work differently, but neither Google nor Microsoft authentication apps transferred my credentials.

@RosemaryOrchard YEESSSS!!! 10 karma points for you. THank you for sharing! great reminder about LAstpass and Google Auth, Microsoft Auth, etc. (any tips or links on how to make those transfers easier would be apprecaited)

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You have to enable it, but I think MS has cloud backup of your credentials.

Yeah, its not on by default and I just spaced on enabling it because I was so excited to get going.
But a good reminder for folks who use these apps. My pain is their gain :wink:

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Google and Microsoft Authenticators both enable cloud backup, if you go through the Settings in the app. I haven’t actually tried it myself but @Jamze confirmed in an earlier post.