How to Clear iPhone Data Before You Sell It

It could be time to upgrade your iPhone and might be time to sell your current one. While it seems easy to prepare for this by resetting iPhone data, there’s a bit more to consider to ensure you can sell your phone successfully. Find out how to clear all the settings/content of a phone and the other vital things you should do before placing an ad for sale!

How to Clear Data on iPhone

If you’re ready to sell your phone, logically, it makes sense to create a listing on an online marketplace like Craigslist or eBay and wait for the offers to roll in, but sometimes a private buyer may want more reassurance than that. The following steps can help you successfully unload your iPhone and ensure a trustworthy transaction.

How to Completely Reset iPhone and Prepare It for Sale

Wipe iPhone Directly

You’ll need to wipe iPhone clean of any content and settings and bring it back to the factory settings. It’s essential to ensure all your data is wiped so your private information remains protected and you can sell it without worry. 

Note that even though your data is gone from the iPhone, it’s not erased from iPhone storage, so take these exact steps to delete everything:

• First, go to your Settings 
• Next, tap on General
• Scroll to the bottom
• Select Reset
• Tap on Erase All Content and Settings
• Tap on Erase iPhone
• Tap on Erase iPhone again to confirm
• Enter your Passcode
• Enter your Apple ID password to turn off Activate Lock and remove the device from Find my iPhone

Read this step-by-step post here if you want to learn how to do a secure data wipe on both Android and iPhone devices!

‍

iPhone Reset via Computer

The good news is you can erase all data from your iPhone on either a Mac OS or Windows PC. Take these steps to clear content and settings:

• Connect the iPhone and your computer with a cable.
• For Mac: In the Finder sidebar, choose your iPhone, click General at top of window, then select Restore iPhone. This will restore the iPhone to factory settings.
• For PC: When it comes to how to reset iPhone with iTunes, Windows is the operating system to do it from. Click the iPhone button near the top of the window, select Summary, and then choose Restore iPhone. 

The advantage of doing an iPhone factory reset via computer is that you not only get rid of all settings and data, but you can also install the latest version of iOS as well.

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

Provide the iPhone History

The final and one of the most important steps is to do a device history to present to potential buyers. You may wonder, why would this matter? 

An IPhone report can offer a lot of information so you can be transparent about what you’re selling. Using the IMEI number, you can show the following vital points:

• That you’re the original owner, and it has all the original parts
• Show the battery health, a factor most buyers would want to know
• That the phone has never been hacked or rooted
• That the iPhone isn’t on a blacklist
• And a report can even show the repair history

Other crucial things that help a buyer are if your phone was a refurbished one vs. the original (should that be the case) and if a carrier lock has been enabled. A digital report is easy to do and accessible in minutes, so it’s worth adding to your steps to sell; it can even boost the value of your iPhone.   

If you don’t want to leave anything to chance when it comes to selling, do a “master reset iPhone” plan and provide a device report so a buyer will walk away happy, and so will you!