How to Prepare for iOS 13 & iPadOS 13

Are you excited about installing iOS 13 on your iPhone or iPod touch, and iPadOS 13 on your iPad? As you may know, iOS 13 is now available to download and update to, whereas iPadOS will be out in just a few days, but before you install the software update on your device you might want to take a few steps to prepare your device.

1: Check Device Compatibility with iOS 13 / iPadOS 13

Like most new versions of iOS, there are minimum system requirements and not all devices support the latest operating system.

The list of iOS 13 compatible devices include the following: iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPhone X, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone SE, and iPod touch 7th generation.

iPadOS 13 supports the following devices: all iPad Pro models (including 9.7″ iPad Pro, 10.5″ iPad Pro, 11″ iPad Pro, and all 12.9″ iPad Pro models), iPad Air 3, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 5, iPad mini 4, iPad 5th generation, iPad 6th generation, iPad 7th generation.

Note that iPadOS 13 is separate from iOS 13. No other iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch models support iOS 13 or iPadOS 13, meaning there are several models that ran prior iOS versions that will not support iOS 13 and later.

2: Ensure Adequate Device Storage

Installing iOS 13 or iPadOS 13 will require several gigabytes of free storage space on the iPhone, Ipad, or iPod touch. You’ll need at least 3GB free to install the update through OTA. If your device is running low on storage, it’s a good idea to check the device storage usage through the Settings app.

This also offers a good opportunity to clean up your device a bit and get rid of some of the old dusty apps and clutter laying around.

Some quick ways to free up storage include deleting apps on iPhone or iPad, offloading apps from iPhone or iPad, using using automatic offloading of unused apps in iOS, and to free up storage by copying photos to a computer or cloud service and then removing videos and pictures from the device itself.

If you have a lot of photos and videos, you can learn how to copy pictures from iPhone or iPad to a Mac with Photos app and how to transfer photos from iPhone to a Windows 10 PC, or more generally learn about transferring photos from iPhone to computer with these instructions using a variety of tools on the Mac or Windows.

If you store a lot of music on your device you may find that deleting songs and music can be useful to free up a lot of storage as well.

3: Backup, backup, backup

By far the most important step before installing any new system software update is to backup your device. Backing up insures that you’ll have a copy of your data in case something goes wrong during the software update process to iOS 13 or iPadOS 13.

The easiest way to backup your device is to backup iPhone or iPad to iCloud. You can also backup the device to a computer with iTunes on Mac or Windows, or backup directly to Mac with Finder if the Mac is running MacOS Catalina 10.15 or later.

If you have a high speed internet connection that is plenty stable, then iCloud backups are simple and easy. For those with slower internet connections, or internet services that is less than reliable, using iTunes backups is often a better idea.

Failure to backup can result in permanent data loss in the event something goes awry during the software update process, so do not skip this step.

4: Update Apps

Open the App Store on your device and install any available app updates, as there will be many apps that are updated for compatibility with iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 features and changes.

Even after updating to iOS 13 or iPadOS 13, be sure to check for app updates again periodically, as developers will continue to release compatibility updates for the latest iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 releases.

5: Install iOS 13 / iPadOS 13!

Backed up and have sufficient space on your compatible iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? Then you’re ready to download and install the iOS 13 update!

iOS 13 is available to the general public now for iPhone and iPod touch.

iPadOS 13 is available to the general public on September 24.

iOS 13.1 and iPadOS 13.1 will be released on September 24.

You can also choose to install the public beta of iOS 13 on iPhone or iPod touch or install iPadOS 13 public beta on iPad and get ahead of the public release schedule, but this is not recommended for most users because of the nature of beta system software. You’d probably want to remove the iOS beta profile after installing the final version on your device however so that you stop getting beta updates on the device when the final version is released.

If you start updating to iOS 13 or a beta release and decide you don’t want to update quite yet, remember you can stop an iOS update while it’s downloading, but once the update is installing it can not be stopped and the process will have to complete. Perhaps you’d rather wait for iOS 13.1, or iOS 13.2, or a later release, that’s certainly a decision you could make to hold off.

Optional 6: Wait to Install iOS 13.1, iOS 13.2, iPadOS 13.2 or later?

Some users may decide they don’t want to install iOS 13 quite yet, and that’s fine. Maybe it’s to avoid some of the reported problems updating iOS 13, or maybe there’s a particular bug that’d prevent you from updating and enjoying the experience, or perhaps you’re waiting for specific app compatibility. Whatever the reason, iOS 13.1 will be released very soon and should patch some of the bugs that have impacted iOS 13 so far, so waiting for iOS 13.1 and ipadOS 13.1 is perfectly reasonable as well. Or maybe you’d rather wait for later releases, be it iOS 13.2 or some other future version. Do what works for you and your devices!

Are you installing iOS 13 onto iPhone or iPod touch, or ipadOS 13.1 onto iPad right away? Do you already have it on your device? What do you think? Tell us your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.