How to Clean Wipe/Format iPhone Data with or without iTunes
Jerry Cook- Updated on 2019-07-29 to iPhone Data
Jerry Cook
Want to Wipe or Format Your iPhone Data and Settings?
Personal information, like contacts, messages, photos, notes, accounts, passwords, is sensitive. No one wants to leak out their own contents. There are a few circumstances in which you want to wipe or format your iPhone data and settings, including the ones when:
- You are going to sell your iPhone for a new one, or you wanna give it away.
- Something goes wrong with your iPhone and you want to send it for repairs but don't want your personal data available to prying eyes.
- Your iPhone is messed up and it needs to be erased and set up again.
Whenever you want to erase iPhone data, you can delete all contents easily. However, you can backup iPhone to your computer if you need some important data and don't want to lose them.
How to Wipe or Format iPhone 5S/5C/5/4S/4 Data and Settings Clean?
There are 2 ways on how to clean or erase data from your iPhone, such as iPhone 6s/6s Plus, iPhone 6/6Plus, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5C, iPhone 5, iPhone 4s, iPhone 4. Some users have reported that deleted SMS text messages or iMessage conversations are found in Search. In this case, you can also rely on these 2 methods to completely erase them. Here are the details.
How to Wipe/Format iPhone with iTunes
If you have iTunes which you used to sync iPhone available, you can use iTunes to do original factory settings restore. This will reset your iPhone to its original state out of factory and it will act as a new one, which means all your contents, including data and settings, will be wiped clean. Here is how:
- 1. Connect iPhone to computer via a USB cable and run iTunes if it doesn't automatically open.
2. Select your iPhone when it appears in iTunes (iTunes 11 for example). Select the Summary tab and click the "Restore" button.
- 3. Click "Restore".
Then your iPhone will restart. You should then see "Slide to set up". You can either follow the steps in the iOS Setup Assistant to set up your iPhone or just turn it off.
How to Wipe/Format iPhone without iTunes
Alternatively, you can clean all the iPhone data and settings without iTunes. Here is how:
- 1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Reset.
- 2. Select "Erase All Content and Settings".
The process can take from a few minutes to several hours. If you run out of power or reset your device before it is complete, you will see the "Connect to iTunes" screen after you connect to power again. If this happens and you want to ensure that your data are fully erased, you can do one of the tips:
- 1. Restore and wipe iPhone with iTunes.
- 2. Connect to power.
- 3. Select "Erase All Content and Settings" again.
With these 2 methods on how to wipe iPhone data for selling or for other usage, you can totally erase all data as well as settings.