Handing Your Old iPhone Down to Your Kid (the Safe Way)

You upgraded your phone, so your old one becomes your kid's phone. It feels like it should take twenty minutes. I do this for a living, I'd done it before, and it still took me three and a half hours with a couple of dead ends that made me want to throw the thing. Here's the version that takes an afternoon.

BrianIn most families this kicks off a little chain reaction: the newest phone comes to you, last year's phone moves down to one kid, and that kid's old phone moves down to the next. Each hand-down is the same handful of steps, so once you've done it once it stops being scary.

Do it top-down, one phone at a time

Each phone you set up frees the one below it.

1. Set up your new phone. Move your data and your phone number from your old phone to the new one. (Your iPhone will offer to do both during setup, just follow the prompts.)
2. Confirm your number works on the new phone (make a call with Wi-Fi off, so you're testing the actual phone line and not internet calling) before you touch the old one.
3. Only then erase the old phone and hand it down. Repeat down the chain.

Never wipe a phone until you've confirmed the line moved up. That's the rule that keeps you from stranding someone without service.

Optional (only if you're locking the phone down): do it now, not later

If you just want to hand the phone over, skip this section and go straight to the checklist below. This part is only for parents who are also turning on the parental controls.

The best time to turn on Supervision (the real control layer, see the supervision guide) is during the fresh setup of a wiped phone. If you hand it over, let your kid set it up, and try to add controls afterward, you have to wipe it and start over.

So set it up while the phone is already erased and in your hands. The full step-by-step is in the lockdown playbook; this post is about doing it as part of the hand-down so you set the phone up only once.

Before you erase the old phone (the checklist that saves you)

• Confirm the number is live on the new phone with a real call.
• If you use a login-code app (like Google Authenticator or Authy), open it on the new phone and check your codes are there. If you don't use one, skip this.
• Signal (the messaging app): move it to the new phone before you erase the old one.
• Your saved passwords come back automatically on the new phone, so you don't need to do anything for those.
• Car key (Tesla, etc.): not synced. Re-pair at the car and delete the old phone's key.
• If you erase the phone while still signed into iCloud, it removes the lock that would otherwise stop your kid from setting it up.

Two mistakes that cost me real time

1. Restore during setup, not after. Signing into iCloud once you've already reached the home screen is not a restore. The actual restore only happens during Setup Assistant (the blue and white welcome screens you tap through before you ever see your apps), at the Apps & Data screen. I missed it, got a blank default layout with none of the apps, and had to erase and redo the whole phone. Choose Restore (or Quick Start from the old phone) when it appears, and don't sign in afterward and hope.

2. "Provisional Enrollment failed" means the phone has no internet (this one's only if you're supervising). During the Apple Configurator step, the phone needs its own Wi-Fi, and if you've already moved the eSIM off it has none. The fix and the details are in the supervision guide.