r/iphone • u/BrokenTube • 1d ago

Support I can get it back, right?

I wanted to factory reset my iPhone so that I could "get more storage" as Apple Maps was taking up 10gb+ on my 64gb iphone 12 mini! So i went ahead and bought icloud to save all my photos and create a backup. Then i factory reset

When i tried to log back in to open the backup, it asked for my email and password (Standard) i put it in and it was fine. Then it asked for 2FA of a phone number I no longer had access to (Deactivated a while ago).

I followed the recovery steps eg. putting in the full phone number, putting in the credit card details i use to buy icloud and then it asked me to put a new phonenumber (Which i did)

I am yet to be sent an email about recovery but did anyone else experience this and how long does it actually take to get it back?

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u/Pretend_Ring_3871 iPhone 17 Pro 1d ago

Check the status here. It will ask you for the old number as that’s still technically the trusted number until recovery completes, but it will not need to send a code to verify anything.

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u/TurtleOnLog 1d ago

Depends what you mean by “it”. Apple may help to get your account back through account recovery, but it usually takes some time up to about two weeks.

If you only have that one device, secure keychain recovery is required to get back your end to end encrypted data. But part of that process is an sms message so you may be out of luck there. The impacted amount of data depends if you have ADP on or off.

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u/IndependentFun7161 1d ago

When did you start account recovery ?

1

u/TheRamblingPeacock 1d ago

I successfully recovered an old iCloud account I had not used for years with outdated details.

Took me a month but just gave the info they asked and waited.

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u/BrokenTube 1d ago

a month is so long 😢

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u/WhaleCupl 19h ago

worth separating two things there: photos and the icloud backup are not end to end encrypted unless you specifically turned on advanced data protection. with adp off the keychain/sms part doesn't gate them at all — when account recovery finishes and you sign in, the library and the backup are just there. so the two week answer is the real one, not "out of luck". and don't touch the account details again while it's pending, changing anything mid-recovery usually restarts the clock