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   Moving Your Apple Watch to Your New iPhone

   Michael E. Cohen

   We have all been here before ' well, if not all of us, certainly a lot
   of us. Apple has begun shipping its new line of iPhones, and if you are
   once again replacing an old iPhone with a new one, you are probably
   vaguely familiar with the steps you need to take to get all your old
   iPhone's data onto your new device. However, this time around, there
   may be another bunch of data to transfer: if you have an Apple Watch
   you also want to move your watch's settings and data.

   It's not hard to make your Apple Watch and your new iPhone the best of
   friends, but you have to do things in the right order, which may mean a
   brief period of delayed gratification. In particular, you want to make
   sure your watch data is backed up and ready to move before you set up
   your new iPhone. Here's the sequence:
    1. Unpair your Apple Watch and your old iPhone. When you do this, the
       Watch app on the iPhone makes a backup of the watch's data before
       it severs the connection, and stores the backup on the iPhone. Note
       that this backup is crucial: your Apple Watch's contents are erased
       when unpairing it from your iPhone! Apple's support note,
       '[1]Unpair your Apple Watch and iPhone,' describes the process in
       detail.
    2. Next, back up your iPhone. You can back it up to iCloud (if you
       have enough storage space) or you can back it up to your Mac with
       iTunes. When you back up your phone, regardless of the method, the
       backup contains your Apple Watch backup as well as all the other
       data and settings from your iPhone. If you back up to iTunes,
       choose to make an encrypted backup; otherwise, the backup won't
       contain your Health and Activity data. The support note '[2]How to
       back up your devices using iCloud or iTunes' describes how to back
       up your iOS device.
    3. With your old iPhone now backed up, turn it off, and, if
       applicable, transfer your SIM card from your old iPhone to your new
       one.
    4. Activate and set up your new iPhone and, during the setup process,
       connect to Wi-Fi. If you backed up to iCloud, choose Restore from
       iCloud Backup when asked; if you backed up to iTunes, connect your
       new iPhone to iTunes during the setup and, when asked, choose
       Restore from iTunes Backup. Apple describes the entire process in
       '[3]Transfer content from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a new
       device.' When you finish, your new iPhone should have all the
       contents that were on the old iPhone ' including your backed up
       Apple Watch data.
    5. With your new iPhone set up and ready to rock and roll, it's time
       to pair your Apple Watch with your new iPhone. Because your new
       iPhone now contains the watch backup that you made on your old
       iPhone, the pairing process offers you the opportunity to Restore
       from Backup. The Apple Watch setup and pairing process is described
       in detail in Apple's '[4]Set up your Apple Watch' support note.

   If all goes well (and it usually does) your new iPhone and your Apple
   Watch should once again be in sync. Nonetheless, you'll still have a
   little bit of work to do. That's because the Apple Watch backup won't
   contain the following items, so you'll have to set them up again
   manually:
     * Paired Bluetooth devices
     * Cards associated with Apple Pay
     * The passcode for your Apple Watch
     * The playlists synced to your Apple Watch

   No, it's not a simple push-a-button-and-it's-all-done process, and it
   may take you some time before everything is back in place. But the
   minor fuss is worth it because at the end you'll have both a new iPhone
   and your Apple Watch working in blissful harmony with it.

References

   1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204568
   2. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977
   3. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201269
   4. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204505

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