Earlier this calendar week , my acquaintance andMacworldcolleague , Dan Frakes , posted a series of tweets bemoan a frustrative problem he was having with his iPhone . It commence with a on the face of it unobjectionable act : point his iPhone overnight . The next morning , Dan ’s iPhone had “ reset”—with the result that the ordering of his home screen icons was mix up and all his fastidiously assembled folder system was gone .

undiscouraged , he restored his iPhone in iTunes , figuring that this should bring back everything to its prior state . Oops . It did n’t work . The iPhone ’s rest home screens remained unorganised and his folders empty . He tried repair five more times with the same infelicitous resolution . ( stick in your own caper here about thedefinition of insanity ) He even try restoring from a anterior edition of the iPhone ’s relief . A smart move ; but still no luck .

I convert tweets with Dan during this distressing incident . At one point , I suggested that , when he figure out what was going on , he should let me eff . I told him it would belike make a good Bugs & Fixes clause .

Article image

Not surprisingly , Dan did soon figure out what was go on . He not only identified the cause of the bug but came up with an effective fix . regrettably , he did not forward me the fruits of his labour . Instead , he had the audaciousness to publish up and post his own article .

But wait ! I could leave a tie to his clause ( as I just did ) and make that my pillar for the week . winnings - win . After some reflexion , I close that this would probably not pose well with my editors . I involve to do something more .

So here ’s the deal . The Southern Cross of Dan ’s solution ( you may read all the details in his article ) was to do a complete restore of the iPhone ( as start via the Restore button in the Summary screen for an iOS gadget ) and follow that with a restore via the Restore from Backup statement . The latter restore is fulfill via a dictation uncommitted in a contextual carte du jour , access by Control - clicking on the itemization of your iOS machine in the iTunes ’ sidebar .

The Restore from Backup command is not a extra of a full restore . As seen in the dialogue that pour down up when you select the command , it only perform a subset of what a full restore does .

Restore from Backup is a little - love troubleshooting asset that can show utilitarian in a mixture of situations . This bid should unquestionably be in your troubleshooting arsenal . Beyond what Dan key , here ’s one more reason to practice it .

Imagine you ’re having some odd trouble with your iPhone . You checkApple Supportfor possible root and they recommend launching the configurations app , navigating to General - >

Reset and tap “ Reset All options . ” Dutifully , you do so . Unfortunately , it does not eradicate your symptom . So now you ’re leave alone with your original trouble plus an iPhone with all of its non - default configurations gone .

Let ’s say you soon get hold a elementary fix for the original problem or adjudicate to ignore it for the present moment . Of capital business organisation now is start all your deleted options back . How can you do this with the least amount of bother ?

One selection would be to remake the background manually , assuming you even remember what they all were . Not a well-chosen view . A 2d choice would be to do a everlasting restore of your iPhone . While this should crop , it ’s time - consuming , requiring that all your apps and media ( music , TV , photos ) be erase and copy back to the headphone . There ’s a better way . You guessed it : employ Restore from Backup . This furbish up “ options ” but without requiring the recopying of culture medium and apps . I ’ve used Restore from Backup for this purpose on several occasion . It works not bad .