You should see a little waiting indicator next to the battery indicator at the top of your screen while the app download starts up, and then you should see the first app start installing. Hang out a second because you may get a prompt or two about allowing location data to Apple Wallet and such. Plug your iPhone back into a power source.If you have a bunch of gray app icons after restoring a backup to your iPhone, here are a couple of things to try: Don't delete the gray 'Waiting' icon, or it will delete the app data along with it (just as if you deleted the app.)Īfter your restore, the app downloads from the App Store are supposed to initiate immediately, but since iOS 10.3, we've seen an uptick in the downloads getting stuck. The grayed waiting icons are placeholders for those apps so you can see the progress of the apps still downloading from the App Store. (This is applicable for restoring iTunes and iCloud backups to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.)Īn iOS backup doesn't store the apps themselves the backup contains the app's data as well as some 'notes' about what apps need to be re-downloaded from the app store. After restoring a backup to your iPhone, you likely will see some grayed icons in place of your apps, and some may say 'Waiting' underneath the icons.
