How to Reset and Restore an iPhone or iPad

Sometimes, your iPhone or iPad becomes unresponsive, you have to shut it down. And sometimes, when you want to sell your old iPhone or iPad, you have to erase all settings and contens from it, because you don’t want your data to be leaked. Alternatively, if your iPhone or iPad has frozen, you have to reset your iPhone/iPad and restore it from a backup. In this tutorial, we will show you how to reset and restore your iPhone and iPad.

Three ways to reset your iPhone and iPad

Power off and restart your iPhone or iPad

Many times, when your iPhone or iPad freezes or runs very slow, the first solution to solve the problem is to power off and restart your iPhone or iPad.

1. Press and hold down the On/Off button on the right side (iPhone 6 or later) or top (all other iPhones and iPads) for 3 seconds.
2. Swipe the slide to power off confirmation slider to the right. This turns off the iPhone.
3. Then press and hold the On/Off button to turn the iPhone back on. Release the button when the Apple logo appears on screen.

Soft reset your iPhone or iPad

Like all computers, the Apple iPhone or iPad occasionally needs a reboot. You can do this by giving it a "soft reset". This does not remove app, songs, contacts or anything else stored on your iPhone or iPad.

1. Press and hold down the On/Off button on the right side (iPhone 6 or later) or top (all other iPhones and iPads).
2. Press and hold down the Home button on the front of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad while still holding down the On/Off button.
3. Keep holding both buttons as the screen turns off and until the turns back on again and displays the Apple logo.

Hard reset your iPhone or iPad (Restore to factory settings)

Hard reset will remove everything from your iPhone or iPad and restore it to its factory settings. So before do this, you have to check your iPhone or iPad data if there is something lost. If you lost some data, you’d better use a iPhone data recovery like Cisdem iPhoneRecovery to get the data back. Then backup your iPhone or iPad data to iTunes or iCloud.

1. On your iPhone or iPad, go to “Settings”, then select “General”. Scroll down and tap on “Reset”. You should see three different options to choose from: “Reset All Settings”, “Reset Network Settings” or “Erase All content and Settings”.
2. To erase your iPhone, iPad, choose “Erase All Content and Settings”. Your phone will ask you to enter your passcode, and will then ask to confirm.

Two ways to restore your iPhone or iPad

After you erase all contents from iPhone or iPad or restore your iPhone or iPad to factory settings, the next step for you is to restore it. You can use restore your iPhone or iPad from iTunes or iCloud. Below are the detailed steps to restore your iPhone or iPad.

Restore iPhone or iPad from iTunes

This method will only be successful if you have created a backup file in iTunes before you reset your phone to factory settings and wiped out all the data it has.

1. Launch iTunes on Mac which you have created a iTunes backup files on. Then connect your iPhone or iPad to Mac using USB cable.
2. Select your device from the top left menu. Check “This computer” and click “Restore Backup”. Then your iPhone or iPad will be restored from iTunes backup. This process will take you some time. Please wait patiently untill the process finishes.

Restore iPhone or iPad with iCloud

If you have backed up iPhone or iPad to iCloud, you can use this method to restore your iPhone or iPad from iCloud backup. The only way to restore from an iCloud backup is through the Setup Assistant. Join a Wi-Fi network and follow steps to restore your device from iCloud.

1. Turn on your iOS device. In the Setup Assistant, tap “Restore from iCloud Backup”, then sign in to iCloud.
2. Proceed to “Choose backup”. Look at the date and size of each and pick the most relevant. After you choose a backup, the transfer starts. This process takes a while, depending on the size of the backup and the network speed.