Before you even peel the plastic off your new iPhone X, read this setup guide.
So that $1,000+ sticker shock didn’t put you off from buying the phone that Apple calls “the future,” did it? We don’t blame you—we bought the iPhone X, too. I know you want to dive right in the moment you get the box in your hands, but slow your roll! We have a little setup advice you’re going to want to pay attention to. Sure, it seems like a drag right now, but this stuff is going to save you time and frustration later.
If you happen to be coming from an Android phone (hey, welcome to the garden!), there’s a Move from iOS Android app that can assist you with setting up your Google account data in Mail, Calendars, and Contacts, moving your camera roll over, even transferring your Chrome bookmarks to Safari.
Quick Start makes setting up a new iPhone fast and easy.
iOS 11 introduces a really great new feature called Quick Start. It’s sort of like magic. You just hold your new phone next to your old phone, and a little card pops up asking if you want to transfer all your stuff to the new device. You’ll then point your old phone’s camera at your new phone (which displays a cloud of little dots) and enter your old phone’s 6-digit passcode.
You’ll go through the rest of the setup process, like enabling Face ID, and then your phone will be ready to go, set up just like your old iPhone. It’ll even prompt you to update your old iPhone’s backup if it hasn’t been backed up in awhile.
After setting up your phone this way, you’ll want to give it a few minutes to re-download all your apps. Initially, your phone will show placeholders for your apps, all arranged and stuffed into folders exactly as on your old iPhone. But every time you download an app from the App Store, your phone actually grabs a unique version specifically optimized for that iPhone model. So your new phone has to download the apps again, but your user data and settings get transferred over.
As fast and easy as this is, we still recommend backing up your phone as described in #1 above. If anything goes really wrong during your setup process, you’ll be glad you did!
Yes, you should use Face ID for maximum security—it’s the quickest way to unlock your iPhone X, and will let you set a more complicated passcode, since you don’t have to type it in every time. Setting up Face ID is much faster than Touch ID, too—the setup screen will promt you and ask you to slowly look around in a circle a couple times. It’s a lot quicker than tapping the home button dozens of times to register a fingerprint.
Setting up Face ID is a lot faster than Touch ID.
Since you need to have Face ID enabled in order to use Apple Pay, this would be a good time to jump into Apple’s Wallet app to set that up. If you’re new to Apple Pay, just follow the instructions within Wallet to add a credit card or two. If you already had Apple Pay on your old iPhone, you’ll notice that your credit cards have disappeared on your new iPhone. Why? For your security, of course. Your Wallet history will still be there, but you’ll have to re-enter any payment cards you’d like to use with Apple Pay. (For more on Apple Pay, check out our complete guide .)
Great, now you should be on your home screen at last. Hit up the App Store first—you’ll want the latest versions of all of your apps in order to take advantage of all the new abilities Apple has given developers in iOS 11. If you’ve used Quick Setup, most of your apps should be up to date already, so this will be, er, quick.
While you’re there, check out the App Store’s new iOS 11 redesign. You’ll find collections of cool apps curated in magazine-style articles, interviews with up and coming app developers, game trailers, and more goodies over in the Today section. This changes daily, so you can come back tomorrow to see what else is new.
This is the new App Store on an iPad. Fancy! You get these nice editorial app packages on the iPhone, too.
Then, launch the Apple Watch app on your new iPhone X, which will walk you through the pairing process including setting a passcode, unlocking behavior, and Apple Pay.
If your Apple Watch isn’t already running WatchOS 4, you’ll want to update it. Read more about watchOS 4 here. To upgrade, your Apple Watch needs to be connected to its charger, in range of your iPhone, and at least 50 percent charged. Then look for the Software Update option in the Apple Watch app. Upgrade your watch all the way to WatchOS 4.1, which adds awesome new music features for Series 3 watches and important security updates for everyone.
As you may have noticed, your iPhone X has no home button. Where the Home button used to be, you now have an extra half-inch or so of glorious OLED display!
So how do you do all that stuff you used to use the home button for? How does the app switching work? Or taking a screenshot?
Here are a few basic commands you’ll need to re-learn now that your iPhone is “home free.”
There are lots of other new commands and gestures to learn. You’re in luck: We have a guide for that !
The iPhone 8 and X support a brand new camera technology called Portrait Lighting. It’s in beta, but you can still give it a shot (get it?). Just launch the Camera app and select Portrait from your camera modes at the bottom of the screen, and then swipe through the different lighting options at the bottom.
Portrait Lighting will take your iPhone X portrait shots to the next level. Hello Kitty agrees.
On the iPhone 8, portrait mode (including Portrait Lighting) is only available on the back cameras. But on the iPhone X, the front-facing selfie camera can use it, too!
Control Center is one of the biggest changes in iOS 11. Instead of spreading your utilities out over three sliding pages, Apple condensed them into one screen with a uniform-looking set of icons. On the iPhone X, you access Control Center by swiping down from the top of the screen, to the right of the sensor notch. Apple’s default Control Center utilities include your camera, flashlight, calculator, and alarm clock; you’ll also find two sliding controls for your volume and screen brightness, plus toggles for rotation screen lock, Do Not Disturb, screen mirroring, and all of your wireless controls (like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Airplane Mode). This is also where you’ll find your iPhone X’s remaining battery life percentage, since it can’t fit on the screen anymore (thanks, Face ID notch).
iOS 11’s Control Center is customizable (the default configuration is at far right). Individual items can be expanded to reveal additional controls.
One of the best parts about iOS 10’s Control Center was the full page of controls just for audio playback, like when you’re listening to a podcast or streaming from Apple Music. In iOS 11, your audio controls are condensed into a small box featuring just a play/pause button and some skip controls.
