What erasing an iPhone removes, and what it leaves behind

Erasing an iPhone is the one step everyone agrees on before a phone changes hands. It’s also the step people worry about most, either that it won’t remove enough, or that it’ll take something they wanted to keep. Both worries have clear answers once you separate what lives on the phone from what lives in your account.

What the erase removes

Erase All Content and Settings restores the iPhone to factory settings. According to the official guide, it removes your personal information, content and settings, including privacy and network settings. That covers:

• photos and videos stored on the phone
• apps and everything they keep, including vault apps and their contents
• messages, notes and files saved on the device
• saved Wi-Fi networks and other settings
• the accounts the phone was signed in to

When it’s done, the phone starts up with the same setup screens a new one shows.

What it leaves alone

The erase works on the phone. It doesn’t reach into your accounts or your other devices, so these survive:

• Your iCloud data. Photos, contacts and other data synced to your account stay there, ready for your next phone.
• Your backups. A backup in iCloud or on your computer isn’t touched.
• Your accounts. Your phone’s main account and every other account still exist. Only the phone’s sign-in is removed.
• Copies elsewhere. Photos you shared, sent or stored in other services.

This is why the official advice is to sign out of your account before erasing, rather than deleting things by hand. While you’re signed in, deleting a photo on the phone also deletes it from iCloud and every other device.

Before you erase

Work through these in order:

1. Back up the phone so you can restore to a new one.
2. Move anything stored only on the phone. Some apps keep data that isn’t in your phone backup. Vault apps are a common example. Export from them first. See exporting photos from a vault app.
3. Unpair any watch paired with the phone.
4. Turn off Stolen Device Protection if you’re selling or giving the phone away. If you’re away from a familiar place, this starts a one-hour delay. See Stolen Device Protection explained.
5. Sign out of your account. In Settings, tap your name, then Sign Out. On iOS 26 and later you’re then asked to choose between erasing the phone and signing out without erasing.

How to erase

1. Open Settings and tap General.
2. Tap Transfer or Reset iPhone.
3. Tap Erase All Content and Settings.
4. Enter your passcode or account password if asked, then tap Continue.
5. If you have an eSIM, choose whether to keep or erase it.

You can also erase from a computer by connecting the phone with a cable and restoring it, but you’ll need to sign out of device tracking first.

After you erase

• Remove the phone from your trusted devices in your account settings, so it can’t receive verification codes.
• Hand over or recycle the phone knowing it’s back to factory state.
• If you’ve switched to Android, deregister your number from the iPhone’s messaging service, so texts from iPhone users reach your new phone.

The Android equivalent, with its own quirks, is in what a factory reset erases on Android. The wider checklist is in before selling your phone.

Vault apps and erasing

A vault app’s contents are erased with the phone, and often they aren’t in the phone’s backup either. Silo, coming soon to iPhone and Android, keeps its vault only in the app’s own storage, and the phone’s backup doesn’t copy it. So before you erase, use Silo’s Export everything to save your photos and files, or once it arrives with launch, set up Silo’s encrypted backup and restore on your new phone with your recovery phrase.