Transfer Data From Android To Iphone
Fanny Lococo
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
Whether you just switched from Android to iPhone, or you're planning on doing so, the big question to ask is how you transfer data from one device to another. Going from an Android phone to another is one thing. Going from Android to iPhone is a whole different beast.
Depending on how much data is being moved, the process can range from minutes to over an hour. But no matter the time, the "how" stays the same, and below I've listed not one but two methods to get all of your data from point A to B, safely and securely.
My go-to method for file transferring is Apple's own Move to iOS service. It will be preloaded on your iPhone so all you have to do is download the Move to IOS app on your Android device via the Google Play Store.
In order for the service to work, you'll have to be in the iOS Setup Assistant, which is the startup page when you first turn on your new iPhone -- the one that cycles between "Hello" in different languages. If you've already set up your iPhone and can access the home screen, you'll have to factory reset it to use Move to iOS.
Lastly, you can use your Gmail to transfer data via the cloud. This method is ideal if there are any extra files that you forgot to move over during the first method or if you had already set up your iPhone and couldn't use Move to iOS.
You can also upload files into a Google Drive folder and download them onto your iPhone. Just note that a standard, free Google account comes with 15GB of storage. You'll have to pay up for expanded cloud storage.
No, unfortunately, you cannot use the file-transfer service if you already completed the iOS Setup Assistant. My best advice is to back up anything on your new iPhone that you'd like to keep, factory reset the iPhone, use the Move to iOS service, and then retrieve what was backed up. Again, just make sure you have enough storage to hold everything.
Apple's Move to iOS service is the most seamless and efficient transfer service I've used, especially when I'm still going through the initial phase of setup. Otherwise, you can also use desktop programs like AnyTrans, connect both phones to a computer, and move files across locally. However, I'm typically against using non-proprietary software when moving personal information, so I'd stick with the two methods above for safety.
Sure. The best method is to back up any information that you'd like to transfer into Gmail or Google Drive and then download it from your iPhone. It requires more manual work, but it's great if you only want to move certain files and not all.
Yes. It's a bit convoluted and works best if you've got larger-sized files to move. A flash drive such as the SanDisk iXpand Luxe for iPhone and USB Type-C devices is ideal because it will connect to the iPhone 14 and earlier models that have Lightning ports, as well as the iPhone 15 and Android devices with USB-C ports.
Hi, if you're like me and bought your not-so-tech-saavy parent an iPhone and want to transfer their data from their Android phone to their shiny new iPhone. Oh, look! Apple has a handy app to do that. BUT IT NEVER SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETES THE TRANSFER.
Thanks your guide is very helpful and helped me get through a lot of unexplained error messages, but now I've reached the most frustrating one of all. Twice now I've done the process all the way through, keeping the iPhone off standby by tapping the screen every 2 minutes for an hour and thirty minutes but when I get to Time remaining: 1 minute the progress bar freezes and I get a Transfer Error on my Android device. I have no idea what else to do, this whole process is extremely frustrating and I hope they fix it soon.
I would always get to the transfer part, see an estimate, but it would always fail. Only after I did the above did it actually prompt me to connect to the iOS network. Still don't know if the transfer will succeed though, as I'm currently doing the transfer while writing this.
Thanks for posting in Apple Support Communities. We can see you've been using Move from Android to iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Although you've been able to complete the transfer, you'd like to leave feedback for the process.
Thanks a ton for sharing this. I have been banging my head trying to transfer data from my Samsung Note 9 for days to get text messages over. It is funny how this is the only helpful resource I've found on this despite the app having what appear to be hundreds of one star reviews saying it doesn't work on the Google play store over the last few weeks.
Most pathetic and the first experience on iOS! I am trying to complete my data transfer from Android to iPhone since 3 days now. This app is really frustrating. My temporary wifi (iOS XXXXX) connection gets broken so often and for petty reasons. Whenever iphone display turning off every 15 seconds or for some other reason the iPhone (host) just stops being a wifi hotspot, the connection breaks and throws an error. Much disappointing after spending 3 days doing this with no result. I unselected my messages and photos from being transferred and the transfer ended pretty much quickly with my apps being transferred. Partly my photos and text messages also did transfer but it there's no saying which ones weren't transferred. So effectively all my data couldn't be transferred to iPhone.
Hi All. Despite trying all the above options was never able to click on the item temporary wifi network icon, although my android phone was showing the iPhone id in the wifi network to which it was connected to! At least 6 failed to complete transfer attempts . Tried to leave out certain transfer options but it seemed to make no difference. Usually failed in the last 10 minutes of the transfer process. Eventually it did complete the process and I know of no reason why it did eventually complete .
Spoke to Apple help who said that the problem is you have 2 completely different phone systems so making them talk to one another is extremely difficult and in their research 50% of users fail to be successful. They ,Apple, had no input in the production of the Move to IOS app so can only help to get round the problem by helping customers to do a manual transfer if all else fails.
In my case, I have a Pixel 3a circa 2019, so used Move to IOS v3.1.1 from early 2020. There are online sites that host older versions of apps, you may have to override chrome telling you it can't validate the developer. I was getting rid of the phone so wasn't concerned about that.
Transferring data like Messages, Contacts and Photos from an Android to an iPhone can be extremely difficult - even to the point where some people don't bother and just start afresh when switching to an iPhone.
To save you time and stress, our team of experts have tested and compared numerous apps to present you with the best transfer apps on the market right now. So, you can transfer your data from Android to iPhone with ease.
As a bonus, Contact Transfer offers additional features to enable you to efficiently manage your contacts on Android, iPhone and PC. You can easily add contacts to your devices, as well as edit and delete contacts on your devices right from within the app!
Note that Droid Transfer will copy data from your Android device to your PC, rather than directly to your iPhone. You will then need to perform further steps to transfer this data from your PC to iPhone. See these guides showing how to use Droid Transfer to transfer photos from Android to iPhone, as well as copy contacts from Android to iPhone.
Note: At step 4, you will notice that SHAREit requires access to GPS, Location services and Bluetooth on your device. If you prefer your chosen app not to have access to these permissions, we recommend using a different method like Droid Transfer.
Our final selected app in this guide is a little different from the others. Android File Transfer is for Mac only, and this app lets you connect your Android to your Mac (which you cannot do by default) and allows you to browse and transfer files from the Android to the Mac itself.
Although you can't transfer files directly from Android to iPhone with Android File Transfer, having your desired files available on your Mac is a great way to have a safe backup of important files, and is only a step away from being easily transferred to your iPhone by way of iCloud.
Depending on the data transferred from your Android, you may need to perform different tasks to then transfer the information onto your iPhone. For example, having transferred the music in the above screenshot, you can drag the copied tracks from your Mac into your iTunes/Music library on the Mac. Finally, you would then sync your iPhone with the Mac to transfer the music.
59fb9ae87f