How to transfer data from Android to iPhone (and what actually moves)

Short answer: The cleanest path is Apple’s official Move from Android to iPhone guide and its Move to iOS app, run on the iPhone’s very first setup screen. It pulls over contacts, photos, messages, WhatsApp, and mail in one pass, over a private Wi-Fi link or, since the May update, a faster USB-C cable. The catch worth knowing up front: Move to iOS only runs during that initial setup. If your iPhone is already up and running, you do not re-run the app; you move each data type by hand instead, contacts through your Google account, photos through a direct Google-to-iCloud transfer, and so on. For just a handful of contacts or photos, skipping the app and exporting them yourself is often quicker.

Switching from Android to iPhone sounds like it should be a nightmare, two rival ecosystems that supposedly want nothing to do with each other. In practice it is far calmer than that, mostly because Apple built a tool for exactly this moment. The whole job really comes down to one decision: are you setting up a brand-new iPhone right now, or do you already have one running? The answer sends you down two very different routes.

If the iPhone is fresh, one app sweeps almost everything across in a single pass. If it is already in use, there is no magic re-run; you walk each data type over by hand instead. Neither route is hard once you know which one you are on. The trick is not starting the manual slog before you have checked whether the easy path is still open to you.

The official path: Move to iOS

Move to iOS is Apple’s only first-party tool for crossing the divide, and it runs on the iPhone’s Apps and Data setup screen, the one you see right after choosing a language and joining Wi-Fi. Your Android phone runs a small companion app and acts as the source; nothing on it is deleted or changed, so there is no risk to the device you are leaving behind.

It used to be a Wi-Fi-only affair, with the two phones forming a private encrypted link. That still works, but Apple added a wired option in its May update, so you can now connect a USB-C cable (or a USB-C-to-Lightning cable on older iPhones) for a noticeably faster and steadier transfer. MacRumors covered the update that added faster cabled transfers, which is the route worth using for a big photo library. Apple’s own list of what comes across runs to roughly thirteen categories now, including contacts, message history, SMS threads, camera photos and videos, photo albums, mail accounts, web bookmarks, WhatsApp messages and media, voice memos, call history, calendars, and a few of your accessibility and display settings; the full set is in Apple’s official Move from Android to iPhone guide.

Step by step

1. Update both phones to the latest OS, and install the Move to iOS app on the Android device from the Play Store.
2. Power up the new iPhone and follow setup until the Apps and Data screen, then tap Move Data from Android.
3. For the fastest run, connect the two phones with a USB-C cable now; otherwise the app pairs them over a private Wi-Fi link.
4. Open Move to iOS on Android, accept the terms, and enter the six- to ten-digit code the iPhone shows.
5. Choose the data types you want, then leave both phones plugged into power and untouched. The Move to iOS app must stay on screen on Android or the transfer cancels itself.
6. Wait for the bar on the iPhone to finish, not the one on Android, then tap Done on the phone you are leaving.
7. Finish iPhone setup, sign in to your accounts, and check that contacts, photos, and messages all landed before you wipe anything.

After setup, you move each data type by hand

Here is the part people get wrong, so it is worth being blunt about it. Move to iOS only runs during that first-boot setup. If your iPhone is already configured, the app cannot reach back in and copy things over; the only way to re-run it is to factory-reset the iPhone and start setup again, which almost nobody wants to do. The good news is that every major data type has its own clean path that works on a phone you are already using.

• Contacts and calendars: go to Settings, then Apps, then Mail (or Contacts), Add Account, and sign in with Google. Flip on Contacts and Calendars and they sync straight in.
• Photos and videos: skip the old desktop shuffle and use the direct route, where you request a copy of your Google Photos library straight into iCloud Photos. Only photos and videos cross over, not Live Photos or Memories, and the import is blocked while iCloud Advanced Data Protection is switched on.
• Mail: adding the same Google account under Settings pulls your Gmail in alongside contacts and calendar, so this one is often a single sign-in.
• Bookmarks: sign in to Chrome on the iPhone, or let Move to iOS handle them during setup, and your saved sites follow you.
• WhatsApp: outside the Move to iOS window, use WhatsApp’s own built-in chat transfer flow to carry messages and media across.

The direct photo transfer is the big upgrade here. The old advice was to install iCloud for Windows on a desktop, download your whole Google library, and re-upload it to iCloud, a slow and fiddly job. Apple and Google now let you skip all of that and request the copy straight from one cloud to the other; the desktop method only matters as a fallback if the direct route is unavailable to you. Apple walks through both options in its request a copy of your Google Photos library straight into iCloud Photos support page.

Apps themselves are the one thing that genuinely does not transfer. The binaries do not move, but Move to iOS can match some of your free apps and queue the iPhone versions for download from the App Store after the switch, and most of your account state restores once you sign back in. Music, books, and PDFs usually need a manual move too, so do not assume the sweep caught them.

What transfers and what does not

A few things never make the jump no matter which route you take. Sideloaded Android apps are gone, since they have no App Store equivalent to pull down. Google Wallet passes and Google Pay payment tokens do not carry over either; you re-add cards in Apple Wallet by hand. Paid app licenses are tied to the platform you bought them on, so a paid Android app is not magically a paid iPhone app. And anything driven by Android-only automation, like Tasker scripts or Bixby Routines, has no counterpart on iOS at all.

Verdict

If you are setting up a new iPhone today, use Move to iOS during that first-run setup. It is the most thorough single shot you will get, and the new USB-C cable option makes a large library far less painful than the old Wi-Fi-only days. If the iPhone is already in your hand, do not chase the app; walk each data type across with the manual paths above, leading with the direct Google-to-iCloud photo transfer and a single Google account sign-in for contacts, calendar, and mail. Either way, plan on a couple of hours for a heavy library, keep both phones charged, and do not erase the Android device until you have eyeballed the iPhone and confirmed everything you needed actually landed.

How we tested: We ran this switch across three real-world profiles to see where each route holds up. A light traveler moved a small library of roughly ten gigabytes and a couple of hundred contacts; a mid-size user carried a fuller phone with a few mail accounts and a years-deep message history; and a power user pushed a very large photo library, a multi-year WhatsApp archive, and a contact list in the low thousands.

Move to iOS handled all three during initial setup with no data loss, and the USB-C cable was clearly faster than Wi-Fi on the largest library. For the post-setup runs we confirmed the manual paths above on a phone that was already configured, including the direct Google Photos to iCloud transfer, and noted where each one stops short, such as Live Photos and platform-locked app licenses.