Move to iOS

Christopher C

3 years ago

Always get "transfer error occurred" when the iPhone goes to sleep during transfer. I'm not going to sit around for an hour tapping the screen every 30 seconds just to copy 200MB worth of text messages. Definitely reconsidering this switch if this is what iOS has to offer. I'm reading that the previous version of the app works fine so it's obvious Apple is the one at fault here.

Andrew Weinstein

3 years ago

This app is terrible. The support and instructions for this is just as bad. I tried for two full days to transfer my messages. This is the only way to do it. Apple Support sent me to a local shop, blaming my WiFi. The tech at the shop told me they have never been successful in this app working its way to completion. At that point, I had to decide if I wanted to switch to iOS and lose my message history or stay on Android. It doesn't make sense about the WiFi comment from Apple because the iOS is the one broadcasting and is the backbone for transferring them. If you don't need to migrate your messages, there are other apps to transfer contacts, photos, and other items. Use those instead. So you might want to try to migrate your messages only and then use the other apps to transfer photos, etc. If you are making the switch, here are some tips: * Don't activate your iPhone until this completes. Otherwise, you'll get texts, phone calls, etc. even though you're iOS device hasn't been fully set-up. If you do view your call log or texts, you'll have to go through the setup and then do a device factory reset and start the Move to iOS process all over again. * It uses a private WiFi SSID from the iOS device to the Android device. For no more than 5 seconds, the Android device needs to connect to the SSID. If it doesn't, it just continues and tries to use your WiFi but it never goes anywhere and there is no indication from either app that nothing is happening. * If you don't see a pop-up on your Android device that you connected to the SSID "iOS xxxx", then you might want to take a 3rd device out and then look to see if the iOS device is broadcasting it or not. There were multiple times I didn't see it broadcast so I knew to start over again. * If you have to start over, it is best to restart both devices. * Make sure that you leave both devices alone until the transfer finishes. For example, on your Android device, the Move to iOS app should stay on-screen the whole time. If you use another app or get a phone call on your Android before the transfer finishes, your content won't transfer. So maybe take the SIM card out and silence all notifications on your Android device. * The instructions say, "should stay onscreen the whole time". Does this mean that if you turn off the screen, everything stops? What about burn-in? Even so I would advise to just leave it on because anecdotally, it seemed to go further (until it didn't). It is crazy that Apple engineers have to have the Android app in the foreground at all times with the screen on to make this work. This seems like a relic from pre-2000. * Even though this doesn't work the first time, there is no mention of what happens if you want to only transfer messages only. My guess is that you then have to use other apps to transfer Photos, Music, Device contacts, etc. What progress indicators they have either constantly spins or there is a line that never fills up. At times, it may tell you how much longer it will take to complete, but if you triple that time and return to your device, it is still stuck on the same message. Perhaps they should have a progress indicator of how many kilobytes out of how many gigabytes are moving across the connection. Yes, kilobytes because it feels like waiting for a file transfer over a 14k modem. Once you do get the file transfer, there are no warnings like "the app stopped working due to.... " Good luck - hope you have better luck than me. I understand that Apple touts the security of iMessage but I would think that they would try to make this one of their most robust applications, not their worst.

Jeff Van Boxtel

3 years ago

This worked well for me last year, but this year trying it for my wife was a nightmare experience. Transferring took hours and always failed part way through. Please add a resume feature! I tried all the recommended tricks, airplane mode etc, and after over a week of trying I gave up and my wife has no message history transferred. This is a really awful "first experience" for people coming to iOS for the first time.

Steven Mobbs

3 years ago

What an awful, awful app. As much as Apple may hate Android, you would think they might put a modicum of effort into an app that is meant to switch people to their own platform. And yet, here we are. Seriously, this must've been made by the bottom of the barrel of their software team. There was no thought (limited thought at the most) put into the data transfer process. Why in the hell can data only be transferred over Wi-Fi? Was the reasoning supposed to be security? Because nothing is more secure than a direct cable connection, and it also happens to be faster. Perhaps their thought was that a user might accidentally yank out the cable in the middle of the transfer and have to start the process over again - which might be fine IF their Wi-Fi transferring worked. As you might be able to tell from the plethora of other reviews, it almost never works. When you do manage to connect, the estimated time is absurdly long, and often drops connection or runs into an error during the middle of the transfer. It's awful, and I hate that this is the only free way to transfer text messages from an Android phone. But seriously, it's 2022. Almost every Android phone from the past 5 years has been using USB-C, and the cable you get in the box for new iPhones is USB-C to Lightning. You'd think that a data transfer using the cable included in the box (that conveniently has both connections most people would need) would be a no-brainer. But I guess it's a tiny-amount-of-brainer, because the no-brains who design and update this app still manage to miss the mark. Hope they fix the Wi-Fi issues and add a cable transfer method, because this is an awful way to introduce people to the iPhone ecosystem, and I imagine it'll drive away many people who can't figure out alternate ways to transfer data.

Garrett Stephens

3 years ago

At this point it's pretty well noted that the app basically doesn't work. What the creaters could probably easily do is allow transfer of small amounts of data at a time, so when it inevitably fails, you can pick back up where you left off--whether it be transferring photos, contacts, etc. At the moment it forces an all or nothing strategy, which pretty clearly explains its current rating. Very sad that there aren't better options.

Jeff Staack

3 years ago

Biggest POS ever. Apple clearly doesn't want your business, because this is THE WORST piece of software ever. Several years ago, I switched from iPhone to pixel for the photography; plugged in the cable, and 20 min later, my messages, photos, etc were on my new phone easy peasy. Now, trying to go back to iOS, this is the only option; it just plain doesn't work. Looking at reviews, it seems as though it hasn't for years, and 🍎 just doesn't seem to give a damn. Don't waste your time.

Summer Swaine

3 years ago

This app does not work. I have never NOT been able to transfer data from my Android to iPhone. I tried numerous times going through setup and having to reset my iPhone and start from scratch. Deleted a bunch of stuff so that the transfer size was smaller...didn't matter. Went to the Apple store, they couldn't help. Went to Verizon, they said it's a known issue with the app. I wasted an entire weekend trying to get the transfer to work properly only to give up and return the iPhone.

Paul Roberts

2 years ago

Complete garbage. Can't alter the iphone settings without completing setup, so the iphone falls asleep, at which point the transfer fails. Meanwhile, the progress bar doesn't actually work, so you can't tell how much or if any data has transferred, and if you start over, it'll just copy it all again. Love having three duplicates of my contacts that are incredibly difficult to delete manually on iOS, Apple! Great product!

Mathew Hennessy

1 year ago

DO NOT USE THIS APP!!! After a two hour file transfer, the majority of my messages and apps were gone, contacts merged into groups, thousands of photos are a jumbled mess. It even erased my bookmarks and cleared my favourites on tik tok. Once the “transfer was complete” my Samsung will not turn on or even charge. It’s killed my android phone so I can not recover everything that was lost. DO NOT USE THIS APP.

Gordon MacDonald

1 year ago

Only wanted to use this to transfer text messages and it didn't work fully. A lot came over, but a lot didn't. Messages from my wife stopped at August 2023, today is January 30th, 2024. No media included in messages came over. Other friends texts stopped at October, November last year. Can't trust what came over and what didn't. Tried updating both phones and resetting iPhone several times, but got the exact same result everytime. If I can't trust it for messages, I won't trust it at all.

Geoff Montee

1 year ago

This app did a decent job transferring data, but it is far from perfect. Group text messages don't really transfer seamlessly. On my new iPhone, my phone number is included in each group as an unknown contact. Google accounts don't actually get transferred, even though "Google accounts" is listed as an option to transfer. App data doesn't get transferred at all, which kind of makes sense. Be prepared to setup every individual app after the transfer is complete.

Daniel Gawędzki

1 year ago

This app is riddled with bugs that seem to be affecting every device. The calculation for estimating time can take an inappropriate amount of time, or never even progress. The estimated time to completion is very inaccurate and changes inconsistently. There is a bug where the transfer gets stuck at 1 minute on the apple device. Apparently all of these bugs have been around a really long time and haven't been fixed. The app is also somewhat slow, the transfer is crawling at best.

crossings jeff

1 year ago

Completely unreliable. Messages are grouped into conversations and all the other complaints others have mentioned. Had this app worked as claimed, I might be using a new iPhone. I wasn't all that impressed with the iPhone. I thought it did a lot of things weird, if not stupidly compared to my Android. But I would've given myself more time to get used to it but for this app.

G Smith

11 months ago

Made a mess of my text messages. Turned texts to individuals into group chats with a bunch of random people. Tried it twice with the same result. Also, when it completed it told me it couldn't move some items, but doesn't tell you what they are. I already didn't want to move to Apple (but needed to), and this isn't sweetening the deal.

Thomas Pool

1 year ago

Horrible app!!! Move to iOS struggles to get SOME of the data transferred. It fails miserably to get messages transferred from Google Pixel to iPhone. Group messages are unusable...it adds multiple people to the group. Other messages are incomplete at best. It's a horrible excuse for an app and makes the transition from Android to iPhone very difficult. Transferred messages are not searchable in the iPhone. You are better to start fresh and not transfer messages.

Travis Meinders

1 year ago

It would fail after an hour or so if I included photos in the transfer (ample space on the phone). In the migrated message history, some of the one-on-one discussions have a bunch of random contacts added to them so they look like group texts. This apparently isn't a rare issue. I ended up returning the iPhone and staying in the Android fold for now. I've been a happy iPhone user in the past so I'm not afraid of change, but this basic stuff needs to uh... just work.

Lily Gaschel

1 year ago

I was extremely hesitant to move from a pixel phone to an iphone after I saw the mixed reviews for this app, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyway, thinking it couldn't possibly be as bad as the reviews said. But after transferring my data half of my contacts were merged into groups I lost a majority of my text messages, pictures have become a jumbled mess, and have completely wrong dates. I would strongly suggest looking into other options rather than risking your data by using this app.