How To Move Data Between iPhones Without Including Photos

Upgrading to a new iPhone can be kinda exciting, but dealing with all your data transfer—especially when you don’t want the photos—can be a bit of a headache. Luckily, iCloud makes this less painful. Basically, you can pick and choose what gets transferred, which is perfect if you only want your apps, messages, contacts, and stuff like that without lugging along all those snaps. Here’s how it’s usually done, step by step.

Step 1: Prepare Your Old iPhone for Backup

This step helps make sure your data is safe and ready to go. Why it helps? Because if your backup is clean and complete, restoring on the new device goes smoother. Usually, this is needed when your current iPhone is acting up or you just wanna make sure everything’s up-to-date before the move.

Open your old iPhone and head over to Settings.
Tap on your name at the top (where your Apple ID is).
Scroll down and tap iCloud.

Step 2: Backup Your Data to iCloud

This is where the actual magic happens. You’re telling iCloud to save a copy of almost everything—except photos in this case, if you want them out. If you’ve never turned on iCloud Backup before, it’s easier than you think:

Scroll down to find iCloud Backup and tap it.
Make sure iCloud Backup is toggled on.
Tap Back Up Now to kickstart the backup.

Be patient here—wait for the backup process to finish (this can take a few minutes). On some setups, it stalls or fails sometimes, so you might need to do it a couple times, or restart your phone if that happens. Generally, ensure your Wi-Fi is solid and your device is plugged in.

Step 3: Set Up Your New iPhone

Once your data is backed up, turn on your new iPhone and follow the setup prompts. When it asks about how to restore or migrate data:

Choose Restore from iCloud Backup.

This is where things get interesting. To stick to just apps, contacts, messages—and not photos—you need to be careful during this restore.

Step 4: Restore Your Data (Without Photos)

During the restore process, after selecting your latest backup, spot the options and make sure you deselect or avoid restoring Photos. On some iOS versions, if you just restore the backup as a whole, it’ll bring over everything, including photos. So, how to skip them?

On the setup screen, you might see a toggle or option to exclude some data. If not, the trick is:
when restoring, don’t sync Photos from iCloud Photo Library. To do this, go to Settings > Photos on your new iPhone and make sure iCloud Photos is turned off. That way, the Photos app doesn’t load all your pics from iCloud during setup.

So, basically, you restore everything else first, then manually disable Photos sync to keep your photo library off the new device.

Step 5: Finish Up

After the data restore and tweaking your Photos settings, finish the rest of the setup. You might need to re-login to some accounts or adjust preferences, but at least your important data—minus the photos—is there and ready to go. Sometimes, a reboot or toggling settings again helps nudge things into place.

Extra Tips & Common Troubles

If it’s being stubborn about restoring or skipping photos, here are some tricks:

Keep both devices connected to Wi-Fi and plugged into power—iCloud backups can drain batteries faster than expected.
If the backup fails, check your iCloud storage—are you out of space? Need to clear some or upgrade?
On some setups, toggling iCloud Photos on and off helps reset what syncs.
Another option? Use AirDrop or an app like AnyTrans for more manual control if iCloud gets wonky.

Summary

Make a clean backup without Photos if needed.
Turn off iCloud Photos on your new iPhone before restoring.
Restore from iCloud, then disable Photos sync to keep pics out.
Keep things plugged in and on Wi-Fi to avoid hiccups.

Hopefully this shaves off a few hours for someone. Because, of course, Apple’s migration options aren’t always straightforward, especially if you wanna skip the pics.