Restore one app from an iPhone backup

TwinHop team · Updated October 10, 2026

Apple’s tools restore a whole iPhone, not a single app. To bring back one app with its data, you either use the app’s own cloud or transfer, or a tool that restores only the apps you choose. Either way, protect the photos on that phone first.

What Apple offers

Finder on a Mac, the Apple Devices app or iTunes on Windows, and iCloud all restore the full backup: every app, photos, messages and settings. To restore onto an iPhone that’s already set up, you erase it first. Apple’s guide.

That’s fine for a new or empty phone. It isn’t, if the phone already has weeks of new photos and chats and you only want one game or one app back.

Check the app’s own options first

• Messengers often have their own backup (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal each handle this differently).
• Games often save progress to an account (Game Center, iCloud, or the game’s login). Sign in before anything else.
• Banks and authenticators usually can’t be restored from a backup at all: you activate them again with the bank or the service.

If the app keeps its data only on the phone, the backup is the only place it exists. Then read on.

Restoring only the apps you choose

TwinHop (Mac and Windows) can add selected apps with their data from a backup to an iPhone that’s already set up:

1. It backs up the old phone, or uses a backup you already have on this computer.
2. You pick the apps.
3. It installs them, puts their data back with a restore, and the phone restarts once.

The apps are added to what is already on the phone. You don’t set the phone up again.

Before you start, about photos: a restore is a restore, even for one app. After any restore, iOS may remove photos and messages that aren’t in iCloud. That’s why TwinHop first backs up this phone, so anything removed can be brought back. Turn on iCloud Photos and Messages in iCloud, or copy your photos to the computer, before you start.

You’ll need free space on the computer for the backup of the old phone, and some time: backups usually take 10 to 40 minutes, most of it for photos and videos.

Backing up needs no key. Restoring apps to the phone needs a $19.99 key for one year, which doesn’t renew.

What can’t be restored this way

• Passwords from the Keychain (not in an unencrypted backup): you sign in to the app again.
• Data the app keeps only in its own cloud: sign in.
• Apps Apple no longer provides.

Sources: Apple Support 118105, 108770. Checked October 10, 2026.