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Move To iOS app transfer error solutions

Hi, if you're like me and bought your not-so-tech-saavy parent an iPhone and want to transfer their data from their Android phone to their shiny new iPhone. Oh, look! Apple has a handy app to do that. BUT IT NEVER SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETES THE TRANSFER.

Well, after hours of frustration, here's what I did to get the process to work.

Notes

I am assuming you are following the official documentation on how to use the app
I did the transfer from a Pixel 3a running Android 11. The new device is a Mini 13. I hope this post helps you but your mileage may vary.
You might have to periodically start over many times. By starting over I mean resetting the iPhone by holding down the power button and tapping "Start Over". And reinstalling the Move To iOS app from the Android device.

On the new iPhone

Just follow the aforementioned official docs until you get to the "Apps & Data" screen. Go ahead and skip whatever setup up til that section cause you might have to reset if the transfer fails. Just set that stuff up after the transfer finishes.
Make sure to take note of the wifi network the phone is connected to.

On the old Android Phone

Install the "Move to iOS" app
Probably not necessary but it's one of my steps that got it working for me: Under Settings > Network and Internet >Wifi, just straight up forget all your saved wifi networks in your area.
Connect to the same wifi network that the iPhone is connected to.
IMPORTANT STEP: Under Settings > Network & internet > Advanced, disable "Adaptive Connectivity"
IMPORTANT STEP: Under that wifi network's settings(cogwheel icon by the network name in the wifi network list) > Advanced, disable "Auto-Connect"

Back to the iPhone

Tap "Move Data from Android". Follow the prompts until you get a code.

Back to Android phone

Open the "Move to iOS" app
Follow prompts. Input code.
You should now be prompted to connect to a temporary wifi network that is named something like "iOS b2d2dd". Connect to it.
- If you don't see this prompt, STOP. DON'T PASS GO. You probably did everything right but something has still gone wrong. The transfer will not work without being on this temporary network. Try reinstalling the app and trying again. If that doesn't work, try starting over on the iPhone(hold power button) and trying again.
After connecting you should now be on that "iOS xxxxxx" wifi network and be prompted to select what data you want to transfer.
Select the data and proceed.
The app should now be "Processing". This took almost an hour for me for just 500mb of text messages, so be patient.
- If you are no longer connected to the "iOS xxxxxx" wifi network. STOP. DO NOT PASS GO. The transfer has already failed. You did nothing wrong and the app won't let you know. You'll have to start over.
After it's done preparing, you should now be transmitting the data. There's a progress bar here. If you made it this far without many retries, I envy you.
- Don't hold your breath though cause for whatever fickle reason you might get a Transfer Error here too. I think it might be because the iPhone is in standby. What worked for me was keeping the iPhone display from sleeping as the transfer was going on. This might take a while. I spent my time looking through Accessibility Settings (hold power button to access). Lots of cool features here and kudos to Apple for making the device so accessible.
Transfer completes. Hopefully you have made it this far.

Apple, please re-build this experience. It's honestly one of the worst migration experiences ever.

Some feedback

Preparing transmission on the Android side takes so long. Can you add a progress bar here, if possible?
- Can you add a retry feature here if the transfer fails, so we don't have to go through preparation all over again?
Some better error messaging please? If the Android phone disconnected from the temporary wifi network, how about you error here instead of later?
Update your documentation to make note of wifi settings that need to be disabled on the Android phone. I believe the Android dynamically changing wifi networks is the main reason transfers error out.
I appreciate the use of a temporary wifi network to do the data transmission over. Super secure and data never touches an Apple server. But can you please make sure the Android device is connected to the network? If the iPhone is the host, should it not be trivial to check for that?
Is there a timeout on how long the temporary wifi network stays up without receiving data from the Android device? If so, bump that up. Again, preparing takes forever and often the Android device disconnects from the temporary network during this stage.

Posted on Nov 30, 2021 4:26 AM

Best reply

move-to-ios-is-bad

Level 1

13 points

Posted on Jan 6, 2022 2:12 PM

Thanks your guide is very helpful and helped me get through a lot of unexplained error messages, but now I've reached the most frustrating one of all. Twice now I've done the process all the way through, keeping the iPhone off standby by tapping the screen every 2 minutes for an hour and thirty minutes but when I get to Time remaining: 1 minute the progress bar freezes and I get a Transfer Error on my Android device. I have no idea what else to do, this whole process is extremely frustrating and I hope they fix it soon.

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33 replies

Apr 1, 2022 12:20 PM in response to tigerlpc

Yes, this has been overwhelmingly successful. I posted this solve several months back with a link and it was taken down a few weeks ago by the moderator. Pity because it is what has seemed to work for everyone, including myself.

ilyaan

Level 1

9 points

Apr 11, 2022 12:14 PM in response to fix_move_to_ios_app

Hey everyone. I had the same issue. Spent the good half of a day trying to fix this until I realised there's no point using move to iOS. After trying all the aforementioned tips and not having any progress, I decided to finally give in to the paid softwares. So far, I haven't found anything that does the transfer from android to iOS for free (except move to iOS of course, which for me was not working at all). Anyway, I decided to buy an app called mobiletrans and that ended up doing it for me. I paid around $4 for the app (the low price is why I decided to go for it, since everything else was like $40 for a yearly subscription). Note that I live in India, so the prices may be different in different regions. Anyway that ended up working for me and was $4 well spent because I stopped wasting time on finding ways to make move to iOS work and it saved me some frustration too. Oh and it also helped transfer my Whatsapp data. Hope this helps.

Apr 13, 2022 1:20 PM in response to bloory

This is my 1st iphone and I have had the same issue now for 2 days and literally all I want to transfer are my messages. It took me a month to finally decide on an iphone and now I'm about to say the heck with it. Did you ever have any luck then? If so how ......

ilyaan

Level 1

9 points

Apr 14, 2022 1:01 AM in response to shalaka7

Hi, bit of an error on my part. I downloaded the app and transferred my data (photos, contacts, videos etc) but when I went to the WhatsApp transfer page, the price was around $20. I thought it was $4 but that’s just for the base data transfer.

Apr 22, 2022 12:44 PM in response to bloory

Hello, I have a pixel 3a and just purchased an iphone 11, priced at 700$ CAD. Biggest mistake ever.

First, there are way too many security restrictions, android is so much easier. Second, the IOS (after installing the updates)

as full of bugs in it. Third and worst of all, after many failed attempts to transfer data from Android to IOS, i gave up.

It's not a question of space on the target iphone. You wait forever ,3 hours later it fails without pointing to why it fails.

I have tried deleting alot of old pictures, videos to trim down the transfer, yet i still have the same issue.After paying so much

for an IPHONE, i would expect a bullet proof device. This is far from it, my android(pixel 3a) was alot better. Nothing but frustrations so far. For the data transfer issues, i followed the suggestions on the apple website, still no luck.

Why is this so complicated?

ilyaan

Level 1

9 points

Apr 22, 2022 1:04 PM in response to worstpurchaseever

While I agree about the move to iOS being a pain, my iPhone didn’t seem to have any of the bugs (it’s an iPhone 13). It seems like the best option (if the move to iOS app isn’t working) is an external app that’ll let you send data (I used MobileTrans). These are usually paid.

Jun 5, 2022 4:24 PM in response to fix_move_to_ios_app

Thanks for these steps. I was still having trouble after repeated attempts. What finally worked for me was removing the SIM from my old device and making sure there wasn't one in the new one. After I did that, it only took about 45 minutes from start to finish to transfer roughly 12GB of data from a Moto g6 to an iPhone Xr.

Jun 16, 2022 1:06 PM in response to fix_move_to_ios_app

Thank you so much for this help. After many tries, I was finally successful in tranferring messages. Your post helped not only with specific steps, but with reassurance that if I kept on trying, it might eventually work!

ctloftin

Level 1

8 points

Jun 22, 2022 9:00 PM in response to fix_move_to_ios_app

I had issues using the current version (3.3.1) of the Move to iOS app not transferring over all texts correctly. After reading the responses to this, uninstalling the app and then finding/installing a previous version of the app from the web worked perfectly. I used version 3.0.0 from the uptodown.com website. Hopefully this helps someone else!

DzieX

Level 1

8 points

Feb 4, 2022 7:47 PM in response to AppleSince1987

Password is the same as network name (with space included). But even when it connects transfer doesn't work.

Kiy2022

Level 1

12 points

Feb 8, 2022 8:23 PM in response to tgok23

Delete

qasim136

Level 1

8 points

Feb 8, 2022 8:34 PM in response to Kiy2022

The older version of Move to iOS works. Very slow but it worked. Took about 6 to 7 hours and me constantly checking.. link is safe

Apr 1, 2022 3:35 PM in response to move-to-ios-is-bad

Did you ever have any success with this issue? Having the same issues here.

shalaka7

Level 1

8 points

Apr 11, 2022 12:22 PM in response to ilyaan

@ilyaan did you transfer Whatsapp data from android phone to iPhone using MobileTrans for $4?

ilyaan

Level 1

9 points

Apr 14, 2022 1:02 AM in response to Mamabear440

The app that I used doesn’t seem to have an option for message transfer. I guess you could try the old version of move to iOS as someone in his thread suggested.

Move To iOS app transfer error solutions