# iOS Partial Restore?



## Stephanie (Jul 21, 2004)

When you do a "restore from backup" with iTunes, it restores everything. Or you can restore nothing and have a 'clean slate'.

Is thee any way to selectively restore things?

Specifically, I'd like to wipe a device to its 'clean slate' state, then manually re-install my apps and settings et cetera. However, there are about a half dozen apps that I want to be able to restore the data from backup. Eg. Game apps' saves and scores; list / database apps' data; connectivity apps' favorites & history.

Can it be done - without resorting to jailbreaking?

Thanks & cheers!


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## Stephanie (Jul 21, 2004)

I figured out how to get what I wanted, and figured I'd share it here incase anyone else comes up against a similar circumstance.

There's a free program called iPhone Explorer that runs on your Mac, which lets you Explore the individual sandboxes of each app you have installed on the iPhone. Using iPhone Explorer, I went into the half dozen apps I wanted to backup & restore, and just copied the contents into folders on my iMac. Inside each app sandbox there are two directories you need to watch, Documents and Library. In Library, there can be subdirectories but typically Preferences contain the stuff you want.

Once I had this info copied onto my iMac, I was able to take a cleanly restored / wiped phone, and install my apps back onto it. Then I used iPhone Explorer again, went to the app sandboxes, and manually copied the documents and library files back onto the iPhone. I made sure that the apps were not running of course, that would probably be a Bad Thing.

Doing this has worked for 5 of the 6 apps that I tried. The sixth looks like I didn't copy all the data out in the first place, so I think that failure was due to operator error rather than a failure of the system.

Anyhow, I'm pleased with the results, and now I know I can safely delete and re-install games later without losing my high-scores, provided I use iPhone Explorer to manually backup the data first!

Cheers!


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