[Fixed] iPhone Stuck on “Restore from iCloud Time Remaining Estimating”

Restore from iCloud Time Remaining Estimating

If you have erased all content and settings from your iPhone or are upgrading to a newer iPhone model like iPhone 14 and now want to get everything back, the safest and quickest approach would be to restore your phone from the iCloud backup. However, during this process, sometimes you may see that the “Restore from iCloud Time remaining: estimating” message stays forever, and you might have no clue what to do next.

Considering the above scenario, here you will find some most practiced solutions that have rescued many people from the identical situation.

How to Fix iPhone Stuck on “Restore from iCloud Time Remaining Estimating”

Usually, this message appears whenever you attempt to restore your iPhone from the iCloud backup, but it stays only for a short while until your phone estimates the correct restoration time. But things become worrisome when your smartphone continues to display this information for an unconvincingly long duration.

Therefore, listed below are some proven troubleshooting suggestions to help you fix the problem and restore your iPhone from the iCloud backup.

1. Wait for a Longer Time

This goes without saying. If the iPhone Restore from iCloud is stuck on the Time remaining: estimating screen, you should wait a bit longer. In Apple discussion forum, an iPhone user mentioned that they waited for about one hour before the phone continued with the iCloud restoration process. However, because the thread was old, you can assume that iPhones weren’t as powerful back then as they are today. With that, if not one hour, you may want to wait for at least 30 to 45 minutes before looking for some alternate solutions.

2. Force Restart iPhone and Try Again

Force restarting an iPhone momentarily pulls out all the power from its motherboard and then releases it back. This flushes all the junk information from the phone’s memory, thus fixing any issue that any such inconsistent data was causing.

Now, because the form factors of iPhones have drastically changed over the years, the method of force restarting the phones varies according to the buttons they have. For the latest iPhone 14, press the volume up button, press the volume down button and hold the side button until your iPhone shows the Apple logo. You can learn how to force restart different iPhones by following this link.

Force restart iPhone 12

3. Switch to a Faster Wi-Fi

Because your iPhone must connect to iCloud to download the backup for restoration, if the Internet is slow, the process may take a significantly long time to complete. Also, due to less bandwidth, many times your smartphone may get stuck on the “Restore from iCloud Time remaining: estimating” screen as the device could be facing challenges while communicating with the iCloud server.

Therefore, switching to a different, comparatively faster Wi-Fi network might resolve the issue. To do so, you can follow the steps given below.

  • Go to Settings on your iPhone.
  • Tap Wi-Fi.
  • Tap to choose a wireless network that you believe is faster than the current one.
  • In the Password field on the Enter Password screen, type the Wi-Fi password.
  • Tap Join from the top-right corner.
  • Try restoring your iPhone from iCloud again.
Internet connection

4. Check Apple System Status

In rare cases, Apple servers are down as well. Some of the possible reasons for this may include:

  • Hardware problem with the server itself.
  • The server lost its connectivity.
  • The server cluster couldn’t be reached due to internal network issues.
  • Network congestion due to a large number of requests.

There could be many other reasons that might be too technical to mention here and/or are beyond the scope of solutions covered under this title.

All said and done, if iPhone is stuck on “Restore from iCloud Time remaining: estimating” screen, you may want to check if the Apple server is the culprit. To do so, you can go to Apple’s System Status page by visiting the https://www.apple.com/in/support/systemstatus/ URL, and see if every listed node (server) has a green mark next to it which means that it is online, available, and ready to serve.

Apple system status

5. Try a Different iCloud Backup

Sometimes your iCloud may have different backups of your iPhone. Usually, most users prefer to choose the most recent version and it works almost every time. However, if iPhone is stuck on “Restore from iCloud Time remaining: estimating” message, you can try restoring it from an earlier version of the backup instance on the iCloud storage. You can do so by following the instructions given below.

  • After powering on your iPhone, continue setting up the device by following the on-screen instructions until you get to the Apps & Data window.
  • Tap Restore from iCloud Backup.
  • When the iPhone prompts, enter your Apple ID credentials to sign in to your iCloud account.
  • Follow the on-screen instructions again until you get to the Choose Backup window.
  • From the list of all the backups, tap to choose a different backup.
  • Follow the prompts and let your iPhone restore from the iCloud backup you selected.
  • Once the restoration process is complete, continue using your iPhone normally.
Restoring iCloud backup

6. Use iTunes

If you are upgrading to iPhone 14 or other models and want all your data from the previous one on the newer device, you don’t have to rely on iCloud. Instead, you can use iTunes to back up your old phone, and then restore the backup to your new purchase. In this way, you will bypass the screen “Restore from iCloud Time remaining: estimating”. The process is explained below.

Back Up old iPhone to iTunes

  • Launch iTunes on your PC (a Windows computer is used here for reference).
  • Use the genuine Lightning Cable to connect your old iPhone to the computer.
  • Wait while iTunes detects your phone.
  • Click the Phone icon from the top of the interface.
iPhone icon on iTunes

  • Ensure that Summary is selected from the Settings category in the left pane.
  • From the Backups section in the right window, click to select This Computer from the Automatically Back Up column.
  • Uncheck the Encrypt local backup box.
  • Click Back Up Now from the Manually Back Up and Restore column.
  • On the confirmation box, click Don’t Encrypt.
  • Wait while your old iPhone is backed up to iTunes.
Back up iPhone via iTunes

Restore new iPhone from iTunes Backup

  • Set up your new iPhone by following the prompts it displays.
  • Use the method given here to turn off Find My iPhone.
  • Next, follow the process explained above to connect your new iPhone to the computer and get to the Summary screen of iTunes.
  • From the Manually Back Up and Restore column of the Backups section, click Restore Backup.
  • From the iPhone Name list on the Restore From Backup box, choose the instance of the backup you created in the previous section.
  • Click Restore.
  • Wait while iTunes restores the backup to your new iPhone.
Restore iPhone from iTunes backup

Conclusion

Although iPhone being stuck on “Restore from iCloud Time remaining: estimating” looks quite daunting, the solutions suggested above are quite safe, quick, and straightforward. Furthermore, if you’re upgrading, you can save several minutes by using iTunes to back up your old iPhone and restoring it to the newer one without downloading anything from the iCloud server.

Michael Yang

Michael Yang

Michael is the founder of ClarifyHow and has also been a test engineer for phones and computers since 5 years ago. He gets various problems while working and fixes most of them by himself or his colleagues, so he would like to share his experience and knowledge.

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