Q: iPhone 6 "Restoring from iCloud Backup" forever

I had this same problem.  I simply connected the iPhone 5s to our laptop's iTunes account via USB.  iTunes installed the new iOS and the phone is fine.

In my case it was stuck downloading the apps, not after. Many of them still "Waiting" in black. One was downloading without advancing... I paused it thinking that was the problem. Then I couldn't "un-pause" it... I couldn't erase it. it was stuck for hours.

I went to the app store, then "Purchased", then in the list I re downloaded the one paused and stuck. Then a few more that were waiting... this unlocked the whole thing and all the remaining apps started downloading.

BUT... those that I re-downloaded from the App store didn't bring the original data from the ongoing back up. I was lucky I didn't need it. But for those apps which I was interested in the data I just waited...

REMEMBER: never erase and re download from iCloud. Not even games you believe they keep the data in the Game Center. Erase and reinstall ERASE the data too. Unless it's Dropbox, Evernote... any cloud based.

I tried tiresome from back up from my iTunes back up on my replaced 5s and all my apps didn't get reinstalled. I called apple care and they had me just update the software, which is weird because I thought I did update the software when I went to restore from back up. But it worked. ALWAYS back up your phone using iTunes. iCloud does not back up everything. It even tells you that

I had the same issue as a lot of you when I upgraded to the iPhone 6 and restored from a back up of my iPhone 5. Evenually I cancelled the restore from back up as all my data seemed to be in place which was fine.

The issue I have now is that I can't back up my new phone, its been a couple of days and no automatic back up and when I try manuallly it says 'Backing up' 'Estimating back up time'  but after a few minutes, nothing and it's back to 'Back up now' 'Never backed up'.

Anyone else had this, or any ideas on what to do?

thanks

Larua 

Hi,

Go to Settings --> iCloud --> Backup --> Stop Restoring iPhone.

Most Probably its restoring first then taking current full backup again with "This iPhone"

Thank you.

If you had the backup file on your computer it might be possible using 3rd party software to extract the app data for a specific app from the backup and copy it back to the iphone (for example, see http://www.techsummary.in/windows-software/how-to-retrieve-icloud-password/msg10 092/?topicseen#msg10092 ), however this wouldn't be possible if your only backup is in iCloud. As far as I know there is no mechanism to do anything other than restore the entire backup from iCloud.

Oh my god, you saved me. Thank you. This worked! I turned off find my phone, then opened all those Apple Apps. Once I did that, the back up completed and i was good to go. Seriously. Thank you.

From what I see a part of the restore is the restoring of all the songs etc that are in the cloud to the phone.. Old Pics etc.  What apply should do is make an app so we can at least see what the backup is on so we can see if it is really stuck or not so we know where it is at. Or just give us access to see a log of the restore process.

all i did was wait then plunged my phone in to iTunes on mac book and sync silly message in close screen on phone saying backing up from iCloud now gone

Dear Yefchak,

The problem may be that your phone is not authorized. Go to your iTunes settings- account - manage devices and authorize it there. Usually this happens because your music hasn't finished loading and it can't because you haven't authorized your phone. If you go into your music app you may find that some of it is not loaded yet. If you click the cloud download button it will tell you that your phone is not yet associated with that apple id. If you choose to associate it (authorize) it will be locked to that id for 90 days. Do this and it will immediately solve your problem.

Hope this helps!

After waiting 3 days, my iPhone was still restoring, so I gave up and restarted. Only then did the phone re-prompt me for other people's Apple IDs, for various songs they'd given me. When it prompted me originally, I'd chosen Cancel, but this time I erased their Apple IDs and put in my Apple ID and password each time. Once I did that, it completed the restore almost right away.

Obviously the restore process ought to re-prompt you if it's stalled waiting for something like that, but it didn't.

I am having the EXACT same issue! 

Can you tell me if you were ever able to resolve the issue and what you did?

Thanks!

What a lot of people miss with regard to back up and restore data is Messages,  In General->Usage, you can see how much your Messages are taking up and my daughters phone which is "stuck" in Restoring from Backup still has 8Gb of messages to finish restoring.  If we cancelled it would lose them all.  I've checked a couple of times and they are slowly loading in the background (you can see the Usage of the messages app increasing).

Something to watch out for.

i am having problem that i am unable to restore my back up from icloud.it consistently keeps on coming that "LOST NETWORK CONNECTION".i am stuck as my new iphone it totally empty.can some one help me plz!

I have the same problem when the iCloud restore stuck for 3 days.  I went to Settings->General->Usage->Manage Storage, deleted 2 movies in the Video App.  And Viola!  the backup is finally finished.  I expected there is a firework or something but there is none.

I think check your usage and delete something you know you can get it back, especially large video, apps or podcast.  I suspect some apps with large data (like the video apps) failed to notify the restore process to complete.  So deleting the data in these apps may help, but YMMV.

Also do an iTunes backup too as a safety net.  Always used encrypted backup or otherwise health data and passwords will not be backed-up.