How to Install an eSIM on iPhone

Installing an eSIM on an iPhone is genuinely quick. What trips people up is not the installation — it is the four questions iOS asks immediately afterwards, which decide whether your home carrier can still charge you for roaming. This guide covers both, and explains why each setting matters. For the bare menu paths, see our iPhone setup page.

Check two things first

Does your iPhone support eSIM? Every iPhone from the XR and XS onwards does, including all the SE models from 2020. US-market iPhone 14s and later have no SIM tray at all and use eSIM exclusively.

Is it unlocked? Open Settings → General → About and scroll to Carrier Lock. It must say "No SIM restrictions". If it names a carrier, that carrier has to unlock the phone first. This one check saves more support tickets than everything else on this page combined — a locked iPhone downloads a travel profile perfectly happily and then refuses to connect, which looks like faulty stock and is not.

Then get on Wi-Fi. Downloading a profile needs an internet connection, and you do not have one from the new plan yet.

Installing the profile

The straightforward route is to open the QR code on a second screen — a laptop, a tablet, a printout — and scan it. On the iPhone, go to Settings → Cellular → Add eSIM. On iOS 17 and later Apple offers to transfer a plan from a nearby iPhone first; ignore that and choose Use QR Code. Point the camera, tap Continue, tap Add eSIM, and wait. One to three minutes is normal. Leave Settings open while it works.

If the QR code is only on the phone you are installing to, use manual entry instead. At the scanner screen, tap Enter Details Manually. Your delivery page shows the activation code in text form, and it splits into the two fields iOS asks for. Given LPA:1$rsp.example.com$K2-4RT-9QW, the SM-DP+ Address is rsp.example.com and the Activation Code is K2-4RT-9QW. Leave the confirmation code blank unless you were given one.

The four questions that actually matter

As soon as the download finishes, iOS walks you through labelling and assignment. Get these wrong and you can spend a fortnight unknowingly using your home carrier's roaming.

Label the plan. Pick "Travel" or type your own. Do not label it "Primary" — you will confuse yourself later.

Default Line: your existing number. This is the line people call and text, and the one iOS uses for outgoing calls unless you say otherwise.

iMessage & FaceTime: your existing number. Otherwise your contacts see messages arriving from a number they do not recognise.

Cellular Data: the new travel plan. This is the setting that decides where your data comes from, and the whole point of the exercise.

The setting nobody mentions

On the same screen there is a toggle called Allow Cellular Data Switching. Left on — and it is on by default — iOS will quietly fall back to your home line whenever the travel plan is slow or briefly unavailable. At your home carrier's international roaming rates. Turn it off.

You can find it again at any time under Settings → Cellular → Cellular Data.

Turn on data roaming — for the travel plan only

Go to Settings → Cellular, tap the travel plan, and turn Data Roaming on.

This feels wrong to a lot of people, and it is worth explaining. A travel eSIM does not "belong" to the network it connects to; it attaches to a partner network, and iOS classifies that as roaming. With roaming off, the eSIM shows full signal bars and passes no data at all. Turning it on costs nothing — the plan is prepaid, and you already paid for it.

Now do the opposite for your home line: tap it, and either turn its Data Roaming off, or use Turn Off This Line to suspend it entirely. Turning the line off means no calls or texts on your normal number; turning off only its data roaming keeps you reachable while ensuring no data goes through it. Most travellers want the second option.

If data still will not flow

Signal but nothing loading almost always means one of three things: data roaming is off, Cellular Data is still pointing at the home line, or the APN did not populate.

For the APN, go to Settings → Cellular → the travel plan → Cellular Data Network, and type the APN from your delivery page into the first field. Leave username and password empty. Then toggle airplane mode on and off. If that menu does not appear at all, the profile is set to configure itself and there is nothing for you to change.

For "No Service", toggle airplane mode for thirty seconds first — that forces a fresh network registration and fixes most cases. If it persists, go to the plan's Network Selection, turn Automatic off, and pick the operator named on your delivery page from the list.

One thing you must never do

Do not delete the eSIM to try to fix it. An eSIM profile downloads once. Once it is removed from your iPhone it is destroyed, cannot be reinstalled, and cannot be replaced. Every problem described above is fixable with the profile still in place, and support can fix the ones that are not. Deletion is the only mistake that cannot be undone.

If you are stuck, contact us with your order number and what the phone displays — signal bars, "No Service", or signal with no data. That single detail usually identifies the cause straight away.