Fixing the Bugs: What Does a Factory Rest Do on an iPhone and When Should You Try it?

If you have an iPhone or have been an iPhone user in the past, you may have been advised to restart your phone to factory settings. You may have done it yourself, or you may have taken it to an iPhone repair center and had someone do it for you.

But what does factory reset do exactly?

When you break it down, it actually sounds quite sinister, that you’ve lost all of your information and can never come back from it.

But that’s, thankfully, not the case.

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the things factory reset does, and how you can reset your iPhone without losing everything.

Read on for more.

So, What Does Factory Reset Do?

To put it simply, factory reset simply resets your device to the same way it was when it came off of the line at the factory.

You may remember when you first purchased your iPhone, either new or second hand, and it seemed to have been untouched. This is because it had been set to factory settings, meaning it was waiting for you to customize it by doing things like downloading apps, choosing the language and much more.

So, in a nutshell, factory reset wipes all of your data so that you’re back to square one. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean your data’s gone.

Let’s go over how to factory reset without losing your data, as well as some of the reasons you may choose to factory reset your phone.

Performing a Factory Reset Without Losing Your Data

You may wish to do a factory reset on a phone you wish to keep. This may be to fix a temporary bug or to iron out a problem it has. And, if that’s the case, you may not wish to lose all of your data in the process.

This site, https://setapp.com/how-to/factory-reset-iphone-without-losing-your-data, provides excellent information on how to factory reset without wiping your data.

In essence, you will lose your data when you factory reset, but you can back it up so that when you restart your phone, you restore it to the previous settings. This link has some fantastic information on how to do so, and you don’t even have to be particularly tech-savvy to do it.

But, before you do so, remember to back up your data in the cloud. Write this down two or three times before you start the process so that you don’t accidentally forget. If you do, you might be bidding adieu to everything on your phone.

What is Resetting an iPhone and How is It Different from Restoring Factory Settings?

Resetting an iPhone means you’ll be resetting some of the preferences on your iPhone. You can also choose to reset all of the preferences. This means you’ll have to sign into WiFi again and may need to resign into certain websites, depending on what you choose.

You can think of resetting like a lighter version of restoring your iPhone. When you reset the iPhone, you’re simply wiping away preferences so you can re-enter them, and it’s a good way to debug your phone before you try and restore it to factory settings.

To reset your iPhone, you’ll need to do the following: tap Settings, then tap general. After that, you’ll tap Reset, which is at the bottom of the screen. You may need to scroll down pretty far to find it.

Once you’ve hit Reset, your phone will ask you what you want to reset. You can select only one of them or all of them. If you select all of them, it’s important to have backed up your iPhone on the cloud before venturing into any territory that may erase some or all of your data.

Your phone will then restart with the preferences reset.

Why Set Your Phone to Factory Settings?

You may wonder why in the world someone would want to risk possibly losing all of their data by restoring their phone to factory settings. But, there are a few reasons why people decide to do this.

If there is a major internal error, sometimes restoring the phone to factory settings can help your phone catch this error and right it as it reboots to your back up.

If you’re selling your iPhone or iPad, setting your phone back to factory settings is an absolute must. There may be dealers that will tell you that they can do it for you, but even in that case, you run the risk of your personal information, photos and other things being exposed. As such, we recommend that you always factory reset a device before you take it in to be sold.

This way, you can be positive that no one who is either refurbishing the phone or who is purchasing your phone will decide to invade your privacy.

Resetting Your iPhone

What does factory reset do? Well, as we’ve stated above, it simply makes sure that your phone goes back to the same settings they were right out of the factory, and right out of the box.

As we mentioned, doing this is very beneficial to people who are having serious issues with their iPhones. It is vital to those who are selling their device, otherwise, it makes it far too easy to gain access to most of your personal information.

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