Restore a Full Backup on a Supervised iPhone

Tech Lockdown Team

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Updated September 8, 2025

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Normally, if you attempt to restore a full backup on to a newly supervised iPhone or iPad, the device will revert to being unsupervised. In order to backup and restore without also removing device supervision, you'll need to use an indirect backup/restore approach.  

Apple doesn't make this process easy, unfortunately. In fact, you'll need two iPhones for a true full backup/restore. This process works best if you are upgrading your phone or happen to have an old iPhone lying around.

This is an excerpt from Tech Lockdown's premium guide for setting up Supervised Mode . See our dedicated resource for setting up supervised mode on iPhone / iPad if you want to follow the whole process from start to finish.

Prerequisites

This process is not intuitive, so please watch this short video to get a better idea of how this process works: 

In summary:

1. Create a backup on your new iPhone before you set up Supervised Mode (you've likely already done this)
2. Restore this backup on to your old iPhone.
3. Follow the device supervision process on your new iPhone, but do not go through the setup screen yet.
4. On your old iPhone, create a new backup.
5. On your new iPhone, go through the first time device setup and restore the backup you just created on your old iPhone.

Option 1: Transfer Backups From iCloud

This option uses iCloud for backing up and restoring and is the simplest approach.

Restore the new iPhone's iCloud backup on to your spare iPhone

On your older iPhone, restore the iCloud backup you made of your new iPhone:

Switch to your New iPhone

You're done! Your new iPhone should have all data restored and still be in supervised mode.

Option 2: Transfer Backups From Your Mac

You could use a Mac computer (or Windows PC with iMazing) instead of iCloud to backup and restore data.

3 devices are required for this process:

Follow the same steps in Option 1, but replace these steps:

1. When prompted to backup with iCloud, replace this step by plugging the device into your Mac (or WIndows PC with iMazing) and backing it up.
2. When prompted to restore data, use "From a Mac or PC"

Plug in your Newer iPhone

Then, restore the new backup back to your current iPhone (the one you're trying to supervise):