So, you’ve got the latest and greatest iPad, and you want to transfer everything on your old iPad—including your apps, contacts, calendars, music, and videos—to your new one. What’s the best way to do it?
My suggestion: try Apple’s iCloud Backup utility, which makes nightly copies of your iPad’s settings, messages, camera roll, and even its wallpaper, and wirelessly saves them to a giant iCloud server bank.
iCloud Backup is an essential tool for preserving your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch data in case something disastrous befalls your precious iDevice, but it also makes for a handy, relatively painless way to move from (for example) an old iPad to a new one.
I’ve already demonstrated how to restore an iCloud backup to an iPhone, but the arrival of my iPad 3—er, the “new” iPad—presents a nice opportunity to document how to use iCloud Backup to transfer settings and data from an old iPad to a brand-spanking new one.
So, ready to get started?
Tap “Back Up Now” to create a fresh iCloud backup of your old iPad.
1. The first step, of course, is making sure you have a recent iCloud backup of your old iPad. (Don’t have an iCloud backup at all yet? Visit iCloud.com, set up a free account, sign in on your iPad, then tap Settings, iCloud, Storage & Backup to get started.)
From your iPad home screen, tap Settings, iCloud, then Storage & Backup. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see a date for your last iCloud Backup, and just above it, a button labeled “Back Up Now.” Unless your latest iCloud backup for your iPad is less than an hour old or so, you should probably go ahead and tap “Back Up Now” to get a fresh backup before moving ahead.
2. Do you have any videos or music on your iPad that you didn’t get from the iTunes Store? Or how about photo albums from iPhoto? If so, they’re probably sitting in iTunes (or iPhoto, in the case of photos) on your PC or Mac—and if that’s the case, I recommend you sync your iPad with iTunes one last time, either via USB or Wi-Fi. (iTunes Match users will be able to download all their music from iCloud.)
3. All set? Now, pull your new iPad out of its box, slide the “slide to set up” slider, pick a language (English, Spanish, French, etc.), a country, and decide whether to enable the iPad’s “location services” (which let your various apps pinpoint your location).
4. Connect to a Wi-Fi network (probably your own), which you’ll need to do if you want to transfer the iCloud Backup of your old iPad to your new one.
5. Next, you’ll get three choices: Set Up as New iPad, Restore from iCloud Backup, and Restore from iTunes Backup. Since we’ve got our iPad backup in iCloud, we’re going to go ahead and select Restore from iCloud Backup, then click Next.
Just tap the most recent iCloud backup of your old iPad, tap Restore, and you’re on your way.
6. On the following screen, you’ll enter your Apple ID and password, followed by a lengthy terms-of-service agreement. Once you’ve read it (or skimmed it, anyway), tap Agree.
7. Now comes the moment of truth: a screen that lists your latest iPad backups in iCloud. Pick the most recent one, then tap the blue Restore button.
8. Up next: a progress bar that shows you how long it’ll take for iCloud to restore your old iPad settings. If you’re lucky, it’ll only take a few minutes, and after another quick loading screen, you’ll jump to the iPad home page—or rather, your old iPad home page, just like you left it (folders and all).
But wait—you’re not done yet.
It could take hours for all your old iPad app to download, but at least you can use your new iPad while you wait.
9. Now comes the boring part: waiting for all your apps and iTunes media (music, videos, e-books, and the like) to download and install themselves on your new iPad. Depending on how many apps and other downloadable goodies you had on your old iPad, you could be in for a long wait. The good news, though, is that you’ll be able to use your shiny new iPad (including Safari, Mail, Music, and other core iPad apps) while you wait for your purchased apps and media to arrive.
10. Before your apps, videos, and other iTunes wares begin to download, you’ll be prompted for your Apple ID; remember to enter the Apple ID you use for the iTunes, which isn’t necessarily the same as your iCloud username and password.
11. So, you’ve waited patiently, and now all your apps and music are downloaded onto your iPad. But what about the non-iTunes videos and music sitting on iTunes? To transfer them (plus any photo albums) to your new iPad, just sync it with iTunes on your desktop. Still no music at all yet? Launch the iTunes app, click the Downloads tab at the bottom of the screen, and you should see all your media queued up for download.
12. At last, your new iPad is set up. What about your old iPad? Eventually, you’ll probably want to wipe it clean; until you’re sure your new iPad is set up properly, though, you may want to keep your old iPad as-is.
And, with any luck, that should just about do it.
Having trouble restoring the iCloud backup of your old iPad to your new one? If that’s the case, don’t panic; just describe what’s happening in the comments below, with screenshots if you can. I won’t be able to answer all your questions, but hopefully a fellow reader will.
Good luck! Oh, and one more thing: don’t forget the 4 things you need to do before selling your old iPad.
I have successfully been able to restore the setting from iCloud however step 9 seems to freeze… a few apps are installed, most are not, and a few are “loading” and have been for a long time now (app size does not seem to warrant the time). Any ideas?
Hmmm. It could simply be that there’s a crush of apps trying to download themselves to your iPad right now; it took more than three hours for all my apps to install on my new iPad. I’d suggest waiting a little longer and keeping an eye on things. Iif that doesn’t work, you could always try restarting your iPad; your downloads should simply pick up where they left off. Keep us posted.
Perhaps synching with iTunes once settings are restored would speed up this part? I’m still waiting for my settings to download so I can’t try it, but it seems like that would be the best of both worlds. You have the ubiquity of the cloud but the speed of a USB synch.
Agreed. Did your iPad settings finally get restored?
I am trying to restore from iCloud but it says it will take 7 hours to restore my settings. What’s up with that? I have a decent DSL connection.
Forgetting that I had the iCloud backup on my old iPad, I went through the setup of New iPad and selected “Setup from iTunes backup.” If I now want to go through process as you describe above do I need to “Erase All Content and Settings” on New iPad?
When you get to the “Connect to iTunes” screen, there should be a “Back” button in the top corner of the screen—that is, unless you went ahead and restored from iTunes, in which case yes, you’d need to wipe your iPad & start over to restore your (more recent, I’m assuming) iCloud backup.
Thanks Ben. Worked just as you described in post.
In my rush to get started with my new iPad, I neglected the restore option and just started using it. I wish I had waited, but it sounds like I can reset it and do it the correct way! Thanks for the great information!
It might be best if you also keep a local backup so if anything goes wrong, you have 2 backups to restore from. You can use the iPhone Backup Extractor tool to retrieve data directly from backup. Most of the files can be easily imported back to your iDevice.
@benpatt:disqus and @Alex_Malureanu:disqus Totally agree that it’s better to have 2 copies. If you have a local copy, then it’s going to be faster to restore it.
Also, as far as I understand, any app needs to be downloaded first and then you can restore the backup (i.e. the app settings). The app is downloaded first automatically when you do it from the cloud. However, I have 2 accounts from which I have purchased the apps (One US account and one UK), so I need to install the apps from these 2 accounts in 2 steps and then restore the backup. Unfortunately, you can only restore from a clean device so you can only use one account, or I am missing something here?
I just got a replacement iPad because something was wrong with mine. I made sure it was backed up to iCloud before I took it to the apple store. I get the new one bring it home and try and restore it from my iCloud back up and it says I have no back ups available? I look in iTunes and it says the last time I backed it up to the cloud was today. Im lost. I can’t do the iTunes restore because the last time i backed it up to that was last november. Please tell me there’s hope.
Hi,
I tried to restore several times from iCloud but the icons disappear and when I go into the purchase history I can install them but there is no data. It seems that disapearing icons when doing an icloud restore is common. What causes this, is there a fix, should I use itunes …. I thought things were meant to get easier???
From the descriptions elsewhere online any content not bought through iTunes will not get backed up to iTunes, do I understand that correctly? PDF’s stored in goodreader for instance?
I have made a Icloud back up several times. So there are multiple back ups available. I am not able to get the original back up which has all my Contacts. How can i get my data back?
Did all you said. When I tried to restore, the only ICloud backups it listed were old IPhone backups. I even bought more ICloud backup space before I backed up my old IPad, backed it up, then started the setup of my new IPad. No ICloud stuff. So I did the restore from ITunes, but none of my music will synch. It is all in Itunes, as I synched my phone to make sure.
So, I do have all my apps and settings and all but no music. Bummed.
did you get a reply to this?
What will I do if the Photos never restored? Coz i already tried to restore many times, at first some of the photos are restored but not all, I’ve waited 12 hours but not all the photos loaded. I only have 1500 photos I don’t think it will take that long. So I reset and restored again my back up from iCloud but this time no Photos loaded.
I’m trying to do an icloud restore to my iphone after I lost most of my apps when syncing to a newley installed iTunes and lost most of my apps. I click on “back up now” but don’t see the choices to “restore” from icloud from a certain date. Did I miss something in your article? Very late, very tired. Can you help? I don’t really want to set it up as a “new device”. I just want my apps that were deleted when trying to sync in iTunes. Thanks.
I’m trying to do an icloud restore to my iphone after I lost most of my apps when syncing to a newley installed iTunes and lost most of my apps. I click on “back up now” but don’t see the choices to “restore” from icloud from a certain date. Did I miss something in your article? Very late, very tired. Can you help? I don’t really want to set it up as a “new device”. I just want my apps that were deleted when trying to sync in iTunes. Thanks.
Unfortunately, you have to wipe your iPad and then set it up as a new device to restore an older (or any) iCloud backup. Another option, though, is to re-download your missing apps from iTunes; just make sure you’re signed in to the iTunes account you originally used to buy the apps.
https://heresthethingblog.com/2012/03/30/download-purchased-apps-music-iphone/
Thanks for the post.
I’ve backed up my old iPad on iCloud but when I try to set up my new iPad using restore it says I don’t have any iCloud to restore. What am I doing wrong?
Figured it out. Had to install ios6 on the new iPad before I could sync so it would match with the old one
I recently upgraded my iPad1 to an iPad4. Restoration with iCloud backup worked flawlessly – all of my apps, music, videos, & pictures are there and where they should be. The problem now is that my iPad is still restoring from iCloud backup after 2 days, but I can’t see it actually doing anything, and I don’t know what more needs to be done. I can’t upgrade the iOS until restore and then backup is complete. There is a button in settings that would allow me to stop the restoration, but I’m almost scared to use it. I have rebooted the iPad thinking that maybe something got stuck and needed to be restarted, but as is, I can’t tell what’s “wrong,” so to speak.
I backed up my Ipad yesterday before impending Tech Support at the apple store. Successful. I then took my Ipad in, which got exchanged / replaced for a new one. On set up I tried to access this previous backup, but it was not seen at all. Help please as the only backup on Itunes was back in June!!!?
as the new Ipad has now updated to IOS6, like the old one already was, I’m wondering if this is why…?
Note to self – read older questions – would have answered all my questions. Updated to IOS6 (like old Ipad) then perform restore. Works a treat.
Had two ipads. One I bought, the other given by my company, which I did not keep sync via icloud nor itunes. As i did not use both decided to sell mine and before I made a back up via icloud on few items/files I wanted to keep (basically pics and few other files). Now I would like to restore and merge the icloud back up of the ipad sold into the company ipad. From your description, this does not seem feasible unless I reset the company’s ipad and do a restore – which I would like to avoid as would need to involve the it people of my office. I wonder if there is any trick that would allow me to do this. Many thanks in advance. Santiago
I recently left my job and the ipad they provided. I set up my account for that ipad as a personal account per advice from an admin assistant at work. Now I have my own ipad and can’t link to my account and the purchased apps I had.