Any tips on doing a full iOS factory reset and starting from scratch?

Believe it or not, my iPhone still fails to search 75% of the time. Reference:

An Apple-recommended Settings refresh seemed to alleviate the issue for a few days, but for the past months-to-years, I haven’t been able to use Search consistently whatsoever.

My wife was using my phone earlier today and couldn’t believe how bad it was. She wondered why I hadn’t reset it and started from scratch, and I realized I simply never thought about it!

So: any thoughts or advice on doing a full reset? I will probably check in with Apple on the search problem before I go through with it, but I’m looking for some community wisdom, too.

As long as you’re backed up to either iCloud or a Mac it’s a breeze.

1 Like

Back up to a Mac.
Restore to a new device
Once you’re through setup, restore from your backup.
Allow plenty of time

1 Like

We’ve discussed this before, unfortunately. Updating iOS fixed it for several months for me but annoyingly my search just began to fail again.

1 Like

Interesting search problem… I would probably do a full factory reset too… After you back up your phone, if you have an Apple Watch, make sure you unpair that first before you “Erase All Content and Settings.” Unpairing forces the Apple Watch to make a backup as well. Otherwise this process is fairly painless as long as you set aside some time.

1 Like

Thanks folks! I’m not planning on restoring. Reinstalling everything manually instead. @bowline did you do a restore or a full reset? (And does the issue still persist for you?)

I’m wondering if it’s a performance issue caused by having too many files available for indexed search, because my iPad Pro has no issues. But that doesn’t seem like it should be a thing.

Prior to manually setting up my new iPhone 11, I took screenshots of the Settings page to create a list of all my installed apps. And after reviewing the list, ended up not installing several of them.

1 Like

Previously, the issue resolved when I updated to a new iOS version.

But in the last two days I was having sporadic issues, specifically when searching inside Settings. And I’d noticed that my battery once again seemed to be discharging faster throughout the day, suggesting perhaps that iOS was once again constantly reindexing (and failing).

This morning I force-quit all apps, turned off the iPhone XS Max (press volume up button, then press volume down button, then press and hold the power button in quick succession, until “slide to power off” menu appeared), waited a couple of minutes, then restarted. As of now everything seems to work again. Fingers crossed. :crossed_fingers:

1 Like