Q: iPhone 6 "Restoring from iCloud Backup" forever

I had the same problem. Had already erased and sold my iPhone 5s and was left with a backup three days old so didn't want to to restore my iPhone 6 that was stuck with the message for three days. All apps and photos were downloaded so I hit "stop backup" in the iCloud backup menu. Message disappeared and now that it's backing up my iPhone 6 the size of the backup is the same as my previous iPhone 5s backup so everything had been downloaded.

Really annoying bug and Apple should fix this ASAP. Nothing like saying welcome to your new phone as not getting something as essential as a backup to work. Apple really needs to get the basics right, their software quality control has been HORRIBLE as of late.

I did a soft reset with the lock and home button and it finally cleared, working great now.

I had the seemingly-stuck "Restoring from iCloud Backup" lock screen message, and after 8 days it has finally completed without my doing anything (at least, without doing anything that worked; I tried a bunch of things).  I had resisted doing anything to stop the restore because there is no easy way to see that ALL the data has finished restoring, or to see what the restore is doing, exactly, and I didn't want to lose any data.  After several days I noticed that by looking at Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage, I could see that the space taken up by my photos was slowly increasing.  I started taking a screenshot of the data information each night, and confirming in the morning that the numbers were continuing to rise.  Moreover, I could see that additional "new" photos (actually very old ones that just hadn't restored yet) were continuing to appear in the Recently Added album in the Photos app as recently as today.  Finally, late this morning, 8 days after beginning the restore, the lock screen message has disappeared and I am able to backup the phone and upgrade to iOS 8.1 without interrupting anything.  In my case, the photo library seems to have been the last to finish.  I have 22 GB of photos on the phone, and my internet connection is not all that fast.  Had I interrupted the restore (either explicitly, or by forcing a new backup to iTunes and restoring to that) I would have lost some of these pictures, which I found unacceptable.  So, if you can stand it, I would recommend patience. I'm not saying nobody's phone is stuck, but mine wasn't.  It just hadn't finished yet.

I think iOS 8 is the first version that gives you a lock screen message to say that a restore is ongoing.  In the past, my restores may have taken just as long, but I didn't notice.   I hope in future Apple can add some progress information (percent restored, perhaps); as things stand we are left to wait and to have faith.  In my case, faith turned out to be justified, but it wasn't easy to maintain. 

d.

I was having the same issue but not nearly for as long as some of you guys here. Maybe about 5 hours total, it's possible mine would have just gone away. The symptoms were:

1) Two apps (PayPal and WW) were not completing

2) The Update was waiting for restore to complete

I did the following two things:

1) Disabled "Find My iPhone"

2) Deleted the two offending apps and installed them from the app store (this was kinda slow)

3) Restarted the phone

4) Waited about 20 minutes

And the problem just worked itself out.

And how can you tell which applications haven't finished restoring?

I deleted Find My Phone, & straight away it completed the restore. Then I reinstalled the app.

The ones that are not completed look grayed out. You have to look through your phone and folders to find them which is a pain. It took me a good 10 minutes of looking around but I have over 300 apps on my phone ... I may have a problem with app hoarding.

I had the same problem, first turned off find my iphone (someone wrote that it helped ) , then ran and close pages (also someone wrote that it helped ) , and success, after 24 hour backup completed successfully

Do it using iTunes and a cable, unless you are unusually patient.

iTunes backups are more complete than iCloud.

If you need help restoring an iCloud backup - Apple Support

Toggling Find My iPhone inside iCloud settings on the iPhone also instantly fixed this for me without going through the whole iTunes thing. However, all my apps had successfully installed by that point, and the problem was the "Restoring from iCloud backup" message on the lock screen still displaying.

I had the same issue, but there is a much easier way than everything that has been going on here.  Go to settings, then go to iCloud, then select backup and then there is a button that says "stop current back" click it. Problem solved.  Atfter you have done that, it will show that there is no current backup and you can click the button and create a new one.  Just to make sure it all worked, I went to the iCloud tab, clicked on manage storage and then was able to delete the backup of my old iPad. 

Hi, I had similar problems after buying an iPhone6 to replace a 4Gs (on iOS6). It was still restoring after 2 days with a good wifi connection. It seems to have been a problem with evernote. I had previously tried the following steps after reading through this thread.

1. Updated all apps and opened all from the main screen with blue dots. Logged in to all needed. Even though all were showing as updated in the app store, the app store icon on the home page always showed 20 to update.

2. Turned off find my phone.

3. Powered off the phone and restarted.

When that hadn't worked I went to the app store and started opening all the recently updated ones from there. Evernote kept crashing and wouldn't open. I deleted it, reinstalled, logged in, and then the restore completed.

Don't understand why, because I'd had evernote open yesterday and it seemed fine...

Only other problem with the changeover is that the LockBox app I've used previously has vanished. Data still on old phone, and I probably need a better replacement anyway!

Downloading Pages and Numbers then downloading a sample document worked for me.  How weird!  

Here's what Apple says (If you need help restoring an iCloud backup - Apple Support) about if "the restore process is taking a long time to finish". Note they say that "the restore process might take 1-4 hours PER GIGABYTE". In my case, my Messages have many videos and pictures which I recall taking up about 2 GB when investigating what was taking up most of my iCloud storage a few months ago. So restoring my messages alone could take up to 8 hours.

The restore process is taking a long time to finish.

The amount of time needed by the restore process depends on your geographical location and the speed of your Internet connection. Even with a fast Internet connection, the restore process might take 1 to 4 hours per gigabyte to complete.

If you're traveling between countries, the restore process might take longer than usual. iCloud is tuned to provide the best service when you're in the geographical location from which you most frequently connect to the Internet. When restoring from an iCloud backup, iCloud is tuned to provide the best service in the geographical region you were in when you created the backup.