New Phone? How to Restore Contacts on iPhone

Getting a new phone is very exciting. From the moment you open the box to the satisfying moment that you peel off the screen protector after hitting power for the first time. If you are simply upgrading your phone, then it may be easier to restore contacts because you will have both phones in front of you. However, if your new phone results from a lost or stolen phone, it may be a little more challenging to restore contacts, photos, etc., but it is possible

Before cloud services and phone backups, cell phone users would have to go through and transfer each contact manually. It was a tedious process that took an excessive amount of time. Thankfully, there are ways in which you can restore contacts on your phone by simply signing in to your backup or cloud account.

There are a couple of different ways to recover information using cloud storage and backups that make this process much more straightforward. Today, we will focus on how to restore contacts on an iPhone using two different methods that rely on backups (iCloud backups and iTunes backups).

2 Methods To Restore Contacts on iPhone

If you have had an iPhone for a while, then you most likely have an iCloud account. The process of restoring calendars, photos, and email & phone contacts will depend greatly on how you have your iCloud backups set up. If you are not sure about your backup settings or have never manually backed up your phone, don’t worry; iCloud automatically backs up your iPhone daily when the iPhone is locked and connected to both a power source and wifi– usually it takes place at night or whenever you charge your phone.

Even if you are using a PC or Mac desktop/laptop, you can still access your contacts or backups by signing into your iCloud account. This is useful if you have a new computer and want to transfer or recover your email contacts or other important information from your phone to your computer.

To restore contacts on your iPhone using iCloud, follow these steps:

Sign in to your iCloud account (on the device that you want the new contacts on)
Click on Account Settings
Scroll down to the bottom of the page
Under Advanced, click on Restore Contacts
Find the date of the backup you wish to restore (choose a date before contacts were lost or before you got your new phone)
Click Restore
Click Restore once again to confirm
Wait for it to complete, and you will receive a confirmation email to the primary email attached to your iCloud account

This way is rarely used anymore because more and more people rely on iCloud backups but if you wish to restore contacts on your iPhone using iTunes, follow these steps:

Connect your phone to your laptop or computer (USB or USB-C, depending on your iPhone and the computer or laptop you are using)
Open iTunes
Select Restore From Backup
Select the date of the backup you wish to restore (before contacts were deleted)
Click Restore
Follow the prompts and wait for the backup to finish restoring
Turn your phone off for a few seconds and then power back on
Open Contacts on your phone to see if they have been restored successfully

Knowing how to restore contacts on iPhones can save you a lot of time if you lose your phone or get a new one. When your iPhone backs up your device to your iCloud account, it is storing all data from your phone so in addition to contacts, your backup can restore other files like music, photos, calendars, emails, apps, etc.

Backing up your phone, computer, and other devices is something that should be done regularly. Accidentally deleting important files is nothing new but luckily with cloud storage backups and other options such as third-party data recovery software, you can recover important files that you thought were long gone.