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Just sayin...

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 8, 2008
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Hello - I’ve got a lot of data stored in various apps...like Spotify, Pocket Casts, Good Reader and the like. I’ve read that the new (as of 12.4) iPhone Migration Tool will move ALL your data from your previous iPhone to your new one, assuming they’re both up-to-date (i.e. both on 12.4.1) with most recent updates of said apps. Will this tool move or copy the apps AND their data from my old phone to my new one? I really don’t want to re-download 800 or so Spotify songs, tons of saved old podcasts saved in Pocket Casts, and many, many saved documents in Good Reader. We’re talking 70-80GB of total space here, which would take me many hours of my time and use up precious bandwidth. Please tell me yes - this will ease the new phone process so much so that a new iPhone 11 Pro would be worth the hassle. Thank you!
 
Well seeing as no one has been able to do it we won’t know. I’d like to say it’s as easy as the Samsung migration took but with Apple these days who really knows
 
Well seeing as no one has been able to do it we won’t know. I’d like to say it’s as easy as the Samsung migration took but with Apple these days who really knows
I was hoping that somebody who had recently used it migrating from something lesser to an XS could chime in.
 
FYI: I called AppleCare and asked them directly. According to the support agent, the new iPhone Migration Tool will indeed transfer the apps and their data. Using the case of a Spotify account with 30GB of downloaded tracks, the agent told me that, after using said tool, the Spotify app and all 30GB of downloaded tracks would be on the new phone - thereby saving the time, hassles and data costs of re-downloading everything to the new phone. If this is indeed true, congratulations and thanks to Apple!
 
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Start the process, check it, go to bed. Get up in the AM and there you go - easy peasy.
 
I’ve been thinking about this too, as I have about 10k songs on my iPhone.

I found this short article with an accompanying video: 9to5mac

I don’t see how this could fail to be quicker than an iCloud restore in terms of moving all your data, since iCloud doesn’t actually do that. With an iCloud restore I would have to trigger the download of all those songs manually (typically one artist at a time, thankfully). It’s a painful process.
 
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I’ve been thinking about this too, as I have about 10k songs on my iPhone.

I found this short article with an accompanying video: 9to5mac

I don’t see how this could fail to be quicker than an iCloud restore in terms of moving all your data, since iCloud doesn’t actually do that. With an iCloud restore I would have to trigger the download of all those songs manually (typically one artist at a time, thankfully). It’s a painful process.

Thankyou so much for linking that video! I was too lazy to google but that was super helpful :)
 
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Does anyone know if the IPhone Migration Tool will also copy over ripped CD music files (which are in Music app on the old iPhone)?

I’ve got a lot of ripped CD’s (imported/converted legally from CD’s I own, via ITunes) in the old iPhone ( XS Max). Those are in addition to lots of music purchased directly in iTunes.

those CD music files of course aren’t backed up to iCloud. So the normal ‘restore from icloud’Process for a new iPhone doesn’t copy those CD music files over.

all of the originals are stored in a iMac... but it’s HD died a couple of weeks ago.

So. wondering if the iPhone migration tool will copy those also.

Thanks
 
FYI: I called AppleCare and asked them directly. According to the support agent, the new iPhone Migration Tool will indeed transfer the apps and their data. Using the case of a Spotify account with 30GB of downloaded tracks, the agent told me that, after using said tool, the Spotify app and all 30GB of downloaded tracks would be on the new phone - thereby saving the time, hassles and data costs of re-downloading everything to the new phone. If this is indeed true, congratulations and thanks to Apple!
Thanks God.
 
I used the migration tool, wifi connection. Spotify tracks still needed to be re-downloaded. Apps also re-downloaded via internet. App data is mostly transferred though.
 
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I used the migration tool and it worked fine for me. Your apps get downloaded from the app store while the data gets migrated over. The only gripe I have of the migration tool is that it migrated all my photos and videos even though I use iCloud Photos and it filled up the space on my phone. So ever since 11 am eastern this morning its been re-uploading the photos to icloud (don’t understand the logic of migrating all pictures over then re-uploading to the cloud). If anyone has any idea why it works that way let me know.
 
Does anyone know if the IPhone Migration Tool will also copy over ripped CD music files (which are in Music app on the old iPhone)?

I’ve got a lot of ripped CD’s (imported/converted legally from CD’s I own, via ITunes) in the old iPhone ( XS Max). Those are in addition to lots of music purchased directly in iTunes.

Yep. Playing my ripped Mario & Zelda Big Band Live CD that was on my old phone on my new phone right now. That's a CD I bought and ripped.

But good Christ, moving 30GB of data is going to take FOREVER. Good luck with that.

That's not the case. I have 63 GB of music and over 2,000 photos on my old phone. The migration took less than an hour.
 
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Reporting back: my X to 11 Pro Max with about 130GB of storage in use went well. Took about two hours for the data transfer element, with app download taking another hour or two.

For some reason about 150 of my 15k songs didn’t transfer across; if I find out any common thread I’ll let you know!
 
I am reporting back as well. The transfer of data from my XS Max to my 11 Pro Max also went smoothly, but none of the specific Spotify songs or Pocket Casts podcasts transferred. In the case of Spotify, the app transferred over, but the phone has to re-download all 2,948 songs...along with the hit to my limited home internet data. All songs that had previously been downloaded were pre-selected, so I'm not missing anything and the re-download is automatic, but it's taking a LONG time. In the case of Pocket Casts, nothing was downloaded or pre-selected - absolutely everything has to be re-selected and downloaded. And, for podcasts that have since been pulled from their source, too bad - they're gone. Sadly, this is EXACTLY the situation I was worried about, that I had specifically asked about, and had asked the AppleCare support person AND two Apple Store people who all had assured me that all application data would be migrated (it was not).

Whether through hopeful optimism, uninformed incompetence or outright deception, I was given a bad answer and took action based on said answer, in the belief that the Apple representatives knew what they were talking about. Sadly, this belief was incorrect and, in the future, I will recognize that the customer-facing Apple representatives I've encountered are sources of incorrect information, whose utterances will be assigned the same weight as spam mail.
 
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I was really happy with how things were transferred. With most of my games, apps, etc I was still logged into my account and didn't have to do anything. My 60+ GB of music was moved over. The only thing I really had to do was switch my Google Two Factor Auth over to the new device.
 
A few more things - Authy (my two-factor authentication program) automatically transferred over and just worked perfectly. My smart scale app (EufyLife) lost all my weight loss data. :-( However, it’s still all there in the Apple Health app, so there’s that. Vivino and OpenTable transferred all their data and settings over perfectly, as did Uber, Arlo, Sonos, Fantastical, Soundhound and Peloton, while Reeder had to be set up all over again from scratch to work with Feedly.

Overall, it’s been a mixed bag.
 
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I had a really hard time initially when I received my phone I used the encrypted backup from iTunes, it would get to 1mm remaining on the progress bar when it was restoring, had to do DFU mode multiple times. Had to go to my local Apple store, we needed up then using the WiFi migration (I have 300GB on my 512 phone) it took approx 3hrs and it was ultimately successful. To me everything was transferred over and was similar to an iTunes backup.

Again my confidence in iTunes backup has been diminished (and I've issues in the past). Thankfully we now have the WiFi transfer option.
 
I did another iPhone Migration yesterday, moving my dad over from his 6S to my previous X. Getting the process to initiate seemed hit-and-miss, and the first time I tried it seemed to time-out whilst I was adding cards to Wallet. So, when I managed to initiate it a second time I hit ‘add later’ instead and then the process was smooth.
 
We did both of our phones this way. Mine was super easy and also prompted me to move my watch to the new phone. My wife’s was not as smooth. We had to unpair her watch and restore from backup. That took forever. YMMV.
 
I did another iPhone Migration yesterday, moving my dad over from his 6S to my previous X. Getting the process to initiate seemed hit-and-miss, and the first time I tried it seemed to time-out whilst I was adding cards to Wallet. So, when I managed to initiate it a second time I hit ‘add later’ instead and then the process was smooth.

I thought I read you unpair the watch from the old phone first, then migrate. Are you saying you did not do this, and it all worked properly to pair your watch to the new phone without issues?
 
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