The more you use your iPhone or iPad, download apps to it,  the more “stuff” gets put onto your device.  Every once in a while you may find that your iPhone or iPad just isn’t running as smoothly as it used to.  One good thing to do is to do a full restore of the device and wipe everything clean and then load everything back onto the device.

 Like homes, devices get warn out after a while and need some good house cleaning in order to work well again.  In an earlier post, Dan explains how to restore Your iPhone From a Backup; the type of restore that I am going to be talking about is similar but a little different.  This type of restore basically wipes everything off of your device.  So when the restore is done, your device is clean of anything that was on it before, like he first day you purchased it.  But don’t worry as you won’t lose all of your previous apps as you should have them saved onto iTunes.  

The difference between “fully restoring” and “restoring from backup” is that with restore from backup you are restoring to a previous state of the iPhone.  When you fully restore you are wiping out all the previous backups and starting from scratch.  It is like writing a paper and deciding to start all over with the first draft versus going back to the 2nd or 3rd draft.  

NOTE:  When you do a full restore, do note that all the information in your applications will be erased.  So when you open up an app after you restore, it will have been as if you just opened that app for the first time.  For most this may not be a big deal, but it may be for some.  I know this may seem weird, but for those of you that are into your game apps, those game apps will now reset.

Fully Restore Your iPhone To Factory Settings

The first thing you are going want to do is to sync your device to iTunes.  That way you have all your apps, videos, songs, etc onto iTunes so when you are ready to put everything back on later, they are all still there.  When you are done with the sync, you can how start the restore process by clicking the restore button.  Then let the device do its thing and get the restore process going.

When your device is done with the restoration process, you will see the following screen on your computer.  Instead of restoring from backup, you are going to want to “Set up as a new iPod”.  This is a clean install.  Don’t worry, if you synced your device before you started the process you won’t lose all your apps that you purchased.

Your device will now be set up as a new one.  At this point all the apps, songs, etc will be synced to your device.  From here you should be good to go.  Let me know if you have any questions.  Again, be cautious as this is a different restore than what Dan talked about earlier.  The advantage of this restore is that it will wipe your device clean.  

I try to do this during every iOS update, just as a precaution to make sure my device runs properly.  You may never have to do this.  But if you feel your device get a little sluggish or it just isn’t running the way it used to, then this may be a good thing to do.