Transfer watch activity to new iPhone

[Gregintosh]

According to what I have read, it seems like if you are getting a new iPhone and want to transfer your Watch data, you have to restore the whole phone from the backup.

Is there any way to do a clean iOS 10 install on the phone AND preserve watch data? I am talking about the fitness history specifically (steps, miles, calories burned, etc).

Thanks!

 

[Julien]

No, you MUST restore from an encrypted backup.

 

[ideal.dreams]

Nope. Only way to restore watch data is unpair your watch from your old device, back that device up in iTunes (encrypted backup!), restore backup to new iPhone in iTunes, then pair watch to new phone.

 

[Julien]

Nope. Only way to restore watch data is unpair your watch from your old device, back that device up in iTunes (encrypted backup!), restore backup to new iPhone in iTunes, then pair watch to new phone.

...or restore from iCloud backup.

 

[profets]

Well, there was one way to kind of attempt it. Make a full local encrypted backup (using iTunes), and then use an app/utility to strip the backup of everything but the Activity data.

Technically it's not a clean start with iOS 10, as you'll restore from this backup that only has Activity data within it.


I do wish we had the option to sync Activity & Workout data to iCloud.

 

[exxxviii]

According to what I have read, it seems like if you are getting a new iPhone and want to transfer your Watch data, you have to restore the whole phone from the backup.

Is there any way to do a clean iOS 10 install on the phone AND preserve watch data? I am talking about the fitness history specifically (steps, miles, calories burned, etc).

Yeah, I will go out on a limb and call this a design defect.

Apple has device-centric data limitation with Watch, Activity, and Health data. If you must setup an iPhone as a new phone (not from a restore), then there is no Apple path to restore your Activity and Health data. There are third party apps that will extract Health data from an encrypted iTunes backup and import it into the new phone. But I am not aware of a third party app that will do the same for Activity app data and Watch app data. Therefore, your watch would have to come over as a new watch and you would lose all of the Watch setup and activity history.

 

[cmbauer]

I had this question didnt want to lose my data but wanted a clean install. I used Decipher Activity Transfer.

It basically creates a back up to restore to your phone that only includes activity. I was shocked when it worked. I stumbled across it when I was googling how not to user activity data.

 

[profets]

https://deciphertools.com/download-decipher-activity-transfer.html

Was mentioned in a thread I had a few months back about backing up just activity data.