You've chosen to move on from iCloud and Apple's ecosystem. Maybe you want to move to Windows or Android, or maybe you'd like to have more choice and control over where your data is stored.

Regardless of your reasons, escaping the Apple and iCloud ecosystem is easy enough to do, but it will require a few steps.

Don't worry, we're here to walk you through it. No matter how long you've been relying on iCloud's ecosystem for your data storage, you can move all of your data to a new place of your choosing.

Moving Your Contacts and Calendars

You can move your contacts in a variety of ways. Gone are the days of having to manually note down all of your numbers with their names attached and then add them to a new phone. Likely you have more than just a few contacts, and neither the time nor the desire to manually move them all over.

Instead, you can sign in to iCloud.com on a PC or laptop and make the process much easier.

Click Contacts in iCloud to bring up an up-to-date list of your iPhone, iPad, or Mac contacts. Holding down Control on your keyboard, start selecting all of the contacts you want to export with your cursor.

Once you've done that, click the Cog button in the bottom-left corner of the screen and select Export vCard. This will download all of your Contacts to your PC or laptop, so feel free to now delete them from iCloud.

icloud contacts export

VCF files can be imported into pretty much anything.

In your browser, you can go to contacts.google.com, for example. In the left menu, select Import and then Select File. You can then select the vCard file you recently downloaded, and finally select Import.

google contacts import

Alternatively, you can sync your contacts via Finder or iTunes. To do that, you first need to disable iCloud syncing. On your iPhone, go to Settings and select iCloud. Then toggle Contacts so that iCloud is switched off.

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Now you just need to head to Finder or iTunes on your computer and connect your iPhone to it. On the summary page, select Info, then, as you'll see in the image below, your Contacts will automatically start syncing. Choose the platform you wish to sync with (Windows, Outlook, Google) and let your computer do the rest!

itunes sync

This also works for syncing your Calendars, allowing you to move your Calendar to Google, Windows, or another platform of your choosing.

If you're on Mac, you won't be able to access iTunes. In this case, you should download Google Calendar (Free) onto your iOS device, log in and follow these steps:

  1. Tap the hamburger icon in the top left section.
  2. Tap on Settings at the bottom of the menu.
  3. Tap Manage Accounts.
  4. In Accounts > iPhone, toggle on iCloud syncing.

Now your Calendar's data will be imported into Google Calendar, and you will be able to access this from your Mac, Windows PC, or any phone.

Move Your Music Files Out of iTunes

If you're switching phones, you can move your music files out of iTunes and onto a new phone in just a few simple steps!

Connect your new phone to the PC as a storage device, open it up in File Explorer and find the Music folder.

Now, in a separate File Explorer window This PC > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music for Windows, and copy the files from iTunes to your new phone. On a Mac, open Finder and select Go > Home > Music > iTunes.

Job done!

Migrating Emails

Android and Windows phones luckily support iCloud.com email accounts, as they do with any IMAP or POP3 account. You will be able to send and receive emails from your iCloud email after following these steps.

Apple requires you to have an app-specific password for third-party apps. For instance, if you want your iCloud email for Gmail, which we'll use in this example.

Go to appleid.apple.com and sign in to your iCloud account. In the Security section, click Generate app-specific password and label it with what you want, for example, "Gmail."

Then it'll bring up a password, broken up with dashes. It is very important not to instert the dashes in the Gmail IMAP and SMTP settings, as it will not work.

Now, you need to sort the IMAP settings for incoming mail:

  • Server Name: imap.mail.me.com
  • SSL: Yes
  • Port: 993
  • Username: The part of your email before the icloud.com bit. For instance, if your email is johndoe91@icloud.com, you'd type in johndoe91.
  • Password: Your app-specific generated password, without the dashes.

With incoming mail sorted, you just need to sort out the SMTP settings for outgoing mail:

  • Server Name: smtp.mail.me.com
  • SSL: Yes
  • Port: 587
  • SMTP Authentication Required: Yes
  • Username: Your full iCloud email address. For instance, johndoe91@icloud.com
  • Password: The app-specific password, without the dashes.

Now, you should have your iCloud email address set up in Gmail, able to send and receive messages via the Gmail app.

Migrating Photos and Videos

If you want to migrate your photos and videos over to Google, simply download the Google Photos app and follow our guide to transfer your iCloud photos to Google.

Or, if you don't want to move to Google Photos, then you could try Dropbox. By downloading Dropbox to your iPhone, it'll automatically detect photos and videos and ask if you want to sync them. Select Yes and then head to Dropbox.com on your PC or Mac to double-check they're all there.

You could try emailing the photos to yourself, though this would be a time-consuming task.

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Migrating Your Personal Data

Now you've got your email, media, calendar, and contacts migrated out of Apple's ecosystem, let's migrate your personal data such as files and documents, health data, wallet data, and iCloud backups.

There are a few ways you can do this.

Files and Documents

You can either sync all of your files and documents into Finder or iTunes and start moving them from iCloud over to your personal files on your PC or to Google Drive, OneDrive, or another cloud storage service by dragging and dropping the files.

Alternatively, you can email them to yourself, as we mentioned for photos and videos.

Health Data

Health data can be very important to you, particularly if you've built up a history of tracking aspects of your health. Unfortunately, migrating health data isn't as simple as it could be, and while there are processes for doing it, they barely work.

Your best bet is to note down your stored health data and then manually input it on the new health data provider you switch to. However, you can follow these steps if you want to attempt a clean transfer.

  1. Go to Settings > General > Auto Lock, and set it to Never. This is because the exporting process usually fails if your iOS screen locks halfway through.
  2. Open Health, then select your Apple ID icon in the top-right corner.
  3. Select Export All Health Data at the bottom of the screen.
  4. Through the export menu that appears, choose where to send it: emailing it to yourself, saving to a file storage provider you use, and so on.

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Neither Google Sheets nor Microsoft Excel will be able to retrieve your XML file and input it into a spreadsheet; this usually requires workarounds from third-party apps. However, there is a very low success rate with all of these third-party apps, and researching online shows that most people who try to export XML files usually have to jump through an unpredictable amount of hoops.

You're best off just switching to an alternative health data app, or manually inputting all the data into a spreadsheet that you've created either on Excel or Sheets. It will take a bit of time but at least you'll know that nothing will go wrong later.

Wallet Data

Unfortunately, Apple is quite tight about what you can do with wallet data, with no easy export options. The best way is to take screenshots of your wallet data such as transaction history and then input it into a spreadsheet or budgeting app manually.

iCloud Backups

Again, there is no easy way to export iCloud backups without third-party apps. The best option is to manually export the aspects of the data you want to yourself via email.

Migrating Game Progress

Here's the kick in the teeth for mobile gamers: there's no guarantee you can migrate your game progress. Because iOS, Android, and alternative platforms use completely different file formats, this means that migrating game progress is entirely dependent on the game.

Luckily, most mobile games allow you to connect via a social network, meaning your game progress will be saved via cloud storage.

Game Center does not save progress. The games themselves are stored as a purchase on either the Play Store or the App Store, depending on your platform, but the actual progress in each game is usually stored on your device.

Your only option is to connect the individual games to a social network account they allow, typically this is Facebook. Then, on your new phone, connect via Facebook and you should have your data carried over. If the game you're playing doesn't allow this then unfortunately you will have to lose your progress.

Notes, Reminders, Passwords

Notes and reminders can be turned on with iCloud to automatically sync over the air. To do this, go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud and make sure to toggle Notes and Reminders to On. When going through your iCloud on PC, you can select the Notes and Reminders and move them to a new device.

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Passwords are unfortunately untransferable. The iPhone Keychain, which can be found via Settings > Apple ID > iCloud, saves all your passwords on the device. It can't be exported to LastPass or alternative password managers and doesn't display a list of passwords for you to manually jot down.

Your best option is to move to LastPass or an alternative password manager to avoid the same situation in the future, but accept you may have to press Forgot Password on a lot of your accounts for various websites or apps and change your password.

If you're going with LastPass, then you may benefit from our complete guide to LastPass.

How D'Ya Like Them Apples?

After following all of these steps, you should be free of Apple's ecosystem and able to move over in full to your new device or alternative service.

Your purchases made on iPhone will likely have to be made again if you want the specific apps on your new phone.