If you want to sell, give away or release your used iPhone to others, the first thing you should do is to erase everything on iPhone completely to keep your personal information safe. When you buy a second-hand iPhone, you may need to erase all the content and settings on the iPhone before using it to avoid unnecessary troubles. If you have deleted some private data on your iPhone, you must want them to disappear permanently to prevent your secrets being revealed.

Apple have considered these situations and erasing iPhone is rather easy. In this tutorial, 5 ways to erase iPhone will be introduced:
1. Erase iPhone directly with your iPhone (FREE)
2. Erase iPhone using iTunes with iPhone connected (FREE)
3. Erase iPhone remotely with iCloud if your iPhone is lost or stolen (FREE)
4. Erase iPhone data completely and securely with SafeEraser
5. Erase deleted data on iPhone completely using SafeEraser

Method 1: Erase iPhone directly with your iPhone (FREE)

1. Make sure that you have backed up your iPhone with iTunes or iCloud, and the backups are up to date if you need to restore the iPhone later;
2. Tap “Settings” > “General” > “Reset” > “Erase all Content and Settings” on your iPhone.

Method 2: Erase iPhone using iTunes with iPhone connected (FREE)

1. Disable “Find My iPhone” in “Settings” > “iCloud” if you have turned it on;
2. Connect your iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes;
3. Select the iPhone when it is found by iTunes;
4. In the “Summary” tab, backup your iPhone with either iTunes or iCloud using the “Backup Now” button if you want to restore the iPhone again;
5. When the backup is finished. Click the “Restore iPhone…” button in the same panel and then hit “Restore” in the pop-up to erase all the content and settings on your iPhone.

Method 3: Erase iPhone remotely with iCloud if your iPhone is lost or stolen (FREE)

You are able to erase iPhone only if you had enabled “Find My iPhone” before it was lost;
1. Log in to https://www.icloud.com/#find with your Apple ID, then click “Find My iPhone”;
2. Click “All Devices” and choose the iPhone you want to erase after it is located;
3. In the iPhone’s Info window, click “Erase iPhone”;
4. Click “Erase” in the pop-up window;
5. Enter your Apple ID password;
6. Click “Next” and all the content and settings on your iPhone will be erased.

If your iPhone is running iOS 7 or later, you are allowed to input a phone number and a message to display on the iPhone after it’s erased.

The remote erase of your iPhone will start immediately if it’s online; if it is office currently, the iPhone remote erase will start the next time it’s online.

Note: After easing an iPhone, you cannot use “Find My iPhone” to locate it any more. So, it’s recommended to locate it or play a sound on it before you decide to erase it remotely.

All the 3 above methods provided by Apple are not 100% safe since iPhone “Restore” does not delete personal data and there are so many iPhone data recovery tools available. If you want to erase your iPhone securely and completely, download the professional iPhone eraser SafeEraser.

SafeEraser is an easy-to-use but professional iPhone erase tool to erase all data (all the content and settings), only deleted data or just private data (Safari history, cookies, input history, search history and so on) on iPhone and overwrite the data with junk files using US Military specification over-writing technology to ensure the erased data is not recoverable. In addition, it also enables you to clean up iPhone data (such as log files, cached files, temp files and junk files) to free the storage space on your iPhone.

Method 4: Erase iPhone data completely and securely with SafeEraser

With this method, you can erase all the content and settings on your iPhone 4, iPhone 4S iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPod touch 4/5/6 and all iPad generations and restore the device to factory settings no matter whether the device is jailbroken or not, carrier-locked or not.

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer and launch SafeEraser;
2. After the iPhone is found by the software, choose “Erase All Data” on the right;

3. Click the link of “Security Level:” and change the “Security Level” as “High Level (3 Times)” in the “Settings” window;

4. Input “delete” in the box to confirm the iPhone erase and click “Erase Now”, then the iPhone eraser will start to erase your iPhone.

The “High (3 times)” Security Level uses the DoD 5220.22-M data sanitization standard originally defined by the US National Industrial Security Program (NISP) in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM). There is no possibility to recover the erased data on iPhone any more once the iPhone is erased with this method even if the government’s state-of-art data recovery technology is used.

Method 5: Erase deleted data on iPhone completely using SafeEraser

1. Get your iPhone connected with your computer using the USB cable came with the iPhone;
2. When the iPhone appears on the SafeEraser, select “Erase Deleted Files”;

3. The software will automatically start to analyze and scan the deleted data on your iPhone;

4. Preview the found data by categories after the scanning, unselect the file types you don’t want to erase from the iPhone and click “Erase Now”.

5. Select a “Security Level” and input “delete” in the box on the pop-up window to confirm the erasure, then hit “Erase Now” to start to wipe the deleted files on the iPhone.

If you still want to restore your iPhone, please backup your iPhone with iTunes, iCloud or third-party iPhone backup software before the iPhone erase. The erase with SafeEraser is irreversible, so think it out with care before you make a decision.