New iPhone 15 stuck on iOS 18 Update

I've spent the last week on this issue and it even rendered one iPhone 14 unrepairable. With the help of Apple Support, I figured it out today. First, you have to setup your new phone as a new phone, NOT by using your old phone. Once you go through the initial setup, you have to download iOS18. Only took about 45 minutes compared to the hours I waited thinking it was gonna load before. I sympathize with each of you that waited over night only to wake up to a still downloading phone. No bueno. After, iOS18 is downloaded, you have to go into settings and reset the phone. I reset all settings but kept the eSims. After the phone resets, you go through the initial setup again, but this time you can use your old phone to setup and transfer data. This data transfer was 30 minutes from the old phone, easy peasy. I did this twice and it worked, once on my wife's phone and once on my father-in-law's. I **** near cried after it worked the first time. Thanks to the Apple lady that helped me and I hope this helps you guys. Good luck.

I’m hitting the exact issue trying to set up an iPhone 15 and transferring fr an iPhone SE. It seems to have downloaded the updated and is apparently installing it now. I gave it over an hour and a half in this state, before I gave up and restarted the new phone. On powering it back on, the only option I got was to reset and start over. It’s stuck again with a spinning progress circle for almost an hour again. This is really frustrating.

I might found a solution. For me it worked to Shut Down the new iPhone 15 Pro, and then on Power on it went directly to Transferring Data to iPhone. I was transferring from an iPhone 11.

I have the same issue on my new iPhone 15 128GB. And it takes a very long time to prepare the update in the first place. There is no option to not update the phone. I was transfering data from an iPhone that is not at iOS18 yet. Feeling frustrated …

some more info: i am transfering data from iPhone 12 mini (i think it has the latest iOS 17 update). It hangs when i click "Install now" after download and preparing update. The blue button just spins forever (more than one hour and still going)

I'm having the same problem - have spent hours trying to get my new phone working today. I have an iphone 15 pro being updated from an iphone se which is running ios 17.6.1. The new phone is trying to install/update ios 18 and it keeps glitching in the way dore38 explains very clearly above. I've done all of the things in your list but it's still not working.

Please help! Not having a working phone is a huge problem!!

You are a LIFE SAVER!!! Spent hours on my mom’s new phone with the same issues. Had it fixed in an hour following your steps. THANK YOU!!

I am facing the same issue. Transferring from iPhone 11 to newly purchased iPhone 15 forced me to upgrade to iOS 18 in my new iPhone. ios upgrade got stuck for 5 hours. Repeated factory reset and retry the same process resulted in same issue. iOS 18 update is not complete in all retries. Any help will be highly appreciated.

This worked on my wife’s phone, but the wording confused me a little bit. This person says to reset your phone. So that’s what I did. Hit reset. You actually need to hit erase all content and settings so once it’s done its thing you get back to the start screen when you turn your phone on for the first time. So yes you are resetting your phone, but you don’t actually click reset you click erase all content and settings

After 4 hours waiting I cancelled the software update on my old phone, then forced a restart on the new phone. When it started up I chose the option not to sync with any other devices. It finished the new phone setup and let me log into my wifi. The phone was now ready to use. I checked the software level and just stared the 17.7 upgrade. It ran normally and in a reasonable amount of time. I may hold off on ios 18 until I manually sync things up from my old phone. But at least my new phone is usable.

I called T-mobile, and they transferred me to Apple care folks. The suggestion they made was to try restoring a backup from iCloud instead of direct transfer from the old phone. I gave that a shot and it ended up finally going through after two failed attempts to transfer from the old phone directly. Hope this helps others too and hope you have a recent backup to go that route 🙂

An update after 24 hours: This may save time for others. I waited overnight to see what else iCloud would sync over to the new phone. Nothing. And all backup/sync settings are on. A check of my new phone revealed that while that clock was spinning away for hours, things were getting moved. But transferring tens of thousands of gigs via Bluetooth is like draining a swimming pool through a funnel. Had I known then what I know now, I would have let the phones keep syncing, even though it would have probably taken 10-20 hours. Lesson learned. So I looked into rerunning Quick Start and it can only be done when resetting the phone! Oh well. But before I reset the new phone I upgraded it to ios 18 to eliminate that complication during migration. That took about 45 minutes. I then reset the new iPhone and selected the option to KEEP the eSIM configuration. I also did the phone sync with a cable rather than via Bluetooth. Let me tell you, this is the only way to go! It took 5 minutes to migrate all data and apps to the new phone. WiFi would have been great too, but Quick Start does not let you configure WiFi before it starts migrating data.

It’s an unfortunate coincidence that iOS 18 came out just at this point in time, so that any new phone migration also involves an upgrade along with moving apps/data, which just takes a really long time. I should mention that I’m not any type of iPhone geek, but I am a retired IT professional. It was a pain for me, so I don’t know how regular people deal with this stuff.

Thank you so much for the advice! I have been stuck all day trying to sort this out and assuming that I’d made a dumb error somewhere along the line (five times over… really?) But thanks to your help it is sixth time lucky and I can finally use my new phone. Many thanks again 😊

You are a genius - had left my phone 'updating' overnight and still hadn't worked 10 hours later! Only thing to add is that when upgrading to IOS18 and setting up your new phone before transfer, don't enable the security settings for if the phone is stolen - I did and now can't progress for an hour as the phone is locked for that function.

I have a hope that this will all be done before lunchtime today - will have been 24 hours in total but could have been longer without the advice from po_victory!

Hello! I would love to help you, but in order to do so, I need more information.

Can you possibly send an error code (if one appears) and if not, a screenshot.

If you cannot do that, try this:

• Try to restore your iPhone from an iCloud back up. This can be done by instead setting up your new iPhone 15 without holding your phone by your new one and setting it up without any backup.
  • If you don’t have any available iCloud space, you can temporarily store it in an Temporary storage by going to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone. After doing so, there should a box at the top that will backup your phone.

If you need additional help, let me know!