Before you even peel the plastic off your new iPhone 12 mini or iPhone 12 Pro Max (or maybe even a new iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 Pro), read this setup guide.
Congratulations! You’re now the proud owner of a new iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, or iPhone 12 Pro Max. You probably want to dive right into the phone the moment you get the box in your hands, but try to contain your excitement and do a little prep first! We have a little setup advice you’re going to want to pay attention to. Sure, it seems like an unnecessary drag, but this stuff is going to really save you a lot of time and frustration later. In macOS Catalina, you can access your iPhone through the Finder. Use iTunes if you’re using a Mac with an operating system older than macOS Catalina. When setting up your new iPhone 12, you can restore your iPhone from this backup once you’ve logged into your new device with your Apple ID. If you happen to be coming from an Android phone (hey, welcome to the garden!), there’s an Android Move to iOS app that can assist you with getting all of your Google account data in Mail, Calendars, and Contacts, moving your camera roll over, even transferring your Chrome bookmarks to Safari. iOS has a feature called Quick Start. It’s practically 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. Quick Start 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 you finish setting up your phone this way, you’ll want to give it a little while 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 your new phone has to actually re-download apps, because every time you download an app from the App Store, your phone actually grabs a unique version specifically optimized for that iPhone model. But your user data and settings get transferred over, and that’s the important part. As fast and easy as this is, we still recommend backing up your phone as described in number 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 12, and will make it less painful to use a complicated passcode, since you don’t have to type it in every time.
