I was restoring my iPhone 5 to the latest iOS and chose restore via iCloud. The restore process - especially for apps - was frustratingly slow and actually stopped frozen after a while.

After trying several other options, I finally "Cancelled" the iCloud Restore operation and then manually installed the apps via iTunes, as well as synced songs, etc.

Now for some of the apps, data is missing and my Photos also appear to be incomplete. Since I "cancelled" the iCloud Restore (and was warned about not being able to do this again), is there any way at all I can coax iCloud into streaming the app data back into the installed app folders, as well as getting my photos? Would there perhaps be two separate ways of doing that?

Or is the only other option to "Erase Content and Settings" and do the restore process all over again, allowing Photos to restore gradually via iCloud, while installing apps via iTunes parallely (without "Cancelling" the iCloud restore)?

If the answer to the last question is "Sadly, yes", then can it be assumed that if the app is installed via iTunes anyway, iOS will proceed to restore the app's data from iCloud? Or does the app HAVE to be installed OTA for the data to also be restored from iCloud?

  • I understand "Sadly, yes" might be the right answer after all, and so be it. But I would appreciate any further inputs on possible workarounds anybody might have tried. Sadly there is no way to broadcast a question or bump it up for attention, other than starting another bounty I guess (if that's allowed?) – Dev Kanchen Sep 13 '13 at 15:23
  • to answer your pretty old question. No, a bounty is the right way to. – Rob Jun 15 '14 at 10:24

iCloud could be slow in restoring especially if you have lots of app data and your WiFi is not Speedy Gonzalez. I have some bad experience restoring with iCloud as my Photos app and Spotify app are both more than 5 GB each.

There is absolutely no way to let iCloud take over from where it left. You need to do the restore anew.

I'd suggest, the next time backing up via iTunes or an alternative such as Copytrans Shelbee. The restore will go rather quicker as it is done over USB. The backup in iTunes is exactly the same as with iCloud (including app data).

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I agree the easiest path is to reset with "Erase Content and Settings". In my experience, restore what you can with iTunes first, i.e. update all your iOS apps in iTunes so the phone doesn't also have to update apps later after restore.

After the iOS reset, try skipping the initial iCloud account and password prompts. After you restore your local settings from iTunes, then perform an iCloud restore, this should have an overlay effect applying the latest differences from the cloud and should minimize what is needed to be downloaded by the phone.

iOS/iTunes restores are not smart about prioritizing what is important first, probably since that differs for everyone, e.g. Mail and photos are important for me, next is app data, esp. passwords.

Finally, if you do keep local backups with iTunes, make sure it's an encrypted backup, not for security, but a lot of app data will simply not backup without encryption.

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Unfortunately, the best solution is to do a restore on your iPhone to get everything back the way it was, assuming that your files where synced successfully to iCloud. I usually deal with OSX so I'm not as familiar with IOS so I cannot suggest any fixes from the phone itself. If you had the photo's, data, apps etc... on your computer you can sync them from iTunes, if not then you will have to do a restore. Stopping those things in mid install will cause nothing but trouble......

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