Backing up iPhone/iPad with Catalina

I'm still getting the "AMPDevicesAgent wants to use your confidential information stored in iOS backup in your keychain" messages. So I chatted to Apple Support for 3/4 of an hour. The Agent was actually very good and checked up on all sorts of things. I shared screenshots of the message and Activity Monitor info for AMPDevicesAgent and AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent. Here are some pertinant excerpts from the conversation;

Agent;

"I checked on my lab machine (Which never has any 3rd Party Apps) which I upgraded from 10.14 and was able to locate AMPDevicesAgent.  This confirm the behavior is expected."

This is useful as it confirms that AMPDevicesAgent is not 3rd party software but is included with Catalina.

Agent;

"AMPDevicesAgent is something new with Catalina. As seen in Activity monitor it shows as an Apple process and I have checked with my lab device to confirm this as well."

Following this the Agent recommended that I ran a Malwarebytes scan. This completed with no problems found.

Agent;

"This is something with Catalina so other persons may have this pop up but I can guarantee this is not a cause for concern."

I asked what would not work if I continued to Deny the access request

"Honestly, I am not aware if anything will stop working if you hit deny."

I was still concerned that we did not know what AMPDevicesAgent actually is, so I was passed over to a supervisor. I explained;

• I am getting the AMPDevices pop up and it is asking for access to my keychain. I have no idea what AMPDevicesAgent is or why it needs access to my keychain.
• It a bit like giving your bank account details to somebody you just met on the street.
• All other things that ask for access tell you who they are e.g Malwarebytes asked for access to my desktop. Its a malware scanner so that is reasonable. But what is AMPDevices?

The answer to this was

"It’s actually part of the Frameworks in you Library folder for the iOS Device that is installed with Catalina, so that would be expected behavior and there is nothing to worry about by accepting it."

So I asked

"OK. Can you please pass a message back to the development team that allowing something called AMPdDeviceAgent to ask for access to the keychain is not good practice. It causes the end user to worry and hence waste lots of time researching the issue and then contacting Apple Support."

Supervisor response;

"Sure can. You can also voice your concern about this at apple.com/feedback. We have a dedicated team here at Apple whose entire job is to review this feedback and implement any changes needed."

Conclusion

AMPDevicesAgent seems to be part of the new Catalina functionality that allows Finder to sync and backup with iOS & iPadOS devices. It looks like either the access rights for it haven't been properly fixed or somebody didn't give it a user friendly name.

As a result of this conversation with Support, I'm going to Allow access.

I suggest that we all input to apple.com/feedback saying that a window popping up to say that AMPDevicesAgent needs access to the keychain is not very User friendly. Either its access rights should be fixed so it doesn't need to ask or it should be renamed something the User can understand.

I was also looking online for the information on other sites, and I found this link on reddit.

Apparently it's from Apple. So it should be safe? I allowed it once to see what happens.

That reddit post had these images:

There is very little on Google except that it appeared in an early beta of Catalina.

Also, I have noticed that if I try and run Sidecar I get the following message

You can’t open the “Sidecar” preferences pane because it is not available to you at this time.

My iPad Pro is connected to my iMac so I expect this error is generated because I denied the AMPDevicesAgent.

You were asked that the first time you backed up your phone to iTunes. But iTunes isn't how you back up with Catalina; instead you use Finder. Connect your phone, open Finder and you will see the iPhone in the sidebar under Locations. As it's a different app it asks the first time you use it.

I used Finder with my iPhone first and was not asked.

I was only asked the first time I used my iPad Pro with Finder.

Anyone any idea how to get the prompt again? I denied access and now it is not asking. I think is is why Sidecar is not available.

Exactly the same for me. There is no iTunes on the system; I didn't get any prompts when I used the Finder with my iPhone; I did get the prompt when I used the Finder with my iPad Pro.

Not sure how to get the prompt again (maybe check in System Preferences | Security and Privacy).

This reinforces my point as to why Catalina would prompt for a valid Apple process. How would any technical or non-technical user know what to do with it since this is not some 3rd party app they are purposely installing.

Does anyone know why it's taking FOREVER to back up my phone and my iPad? Since updating to Catalina it's taking an hour or more to back up the iPad when before it took minutes.

Looks like Apple has hired developers that change things to secure their jobs and prove they did something by making it look different rather than making it work better. This update is crap.

Loupita wrote:

Does anyone know why it's taking FOREVER to back up my phone and my iPad? Since updating to Catalina it's taking an hour or more to back up the iPad when before it took minutes.

The first backup with Catalina will take a long time, because it creates a completely new backup. Normally backups are "incremental", meaning that only things that have changed are backed up. This is much faster than a full backup.

Thanks - understand the concept of incremental backups - the fact is that my iPad has gone through that process several times already and it continues to require a significant amount of time to backup, even without changes to the content.

Hmm, I just backed up my iPhone 256 GB (half full) and my iPad. Each took about 5 minutes. The iPhone was a full backup (I had archived the previous backup). Do you have an antivirus on your computer that is set to scan all files when they are opened?

No - the phone has sped up so I don't know if it needed multiple passes to get a foothold. My iPad is 512 and has about 400Gbs of video on it. So it continues to be slow. I think part of the issue is that having split iTunes into different parts it is now backing up each part separately - so much for the "conveniences" of that ambition. Same content just more places to go find it.

I'm frustrated that this update has been so poorly managed and Apple offered no warnings about things needing additional time etc. It seems as though it's been a "don't ask, we know better" kind of upgrade. Makes me question wanting to do future upgrades.

Catalina is much more protective of your privacy than previous versions. In this case if you deny you will just have to enter your password more often (like every time) when you want to back up your phone.

It took my new Mac Book Pro three hours to do the upgrade to Catalina. It took my old Air 2 hours. Think it was the big music library on an attached drive on that newer one...? Whatever it was, it seemed to do an entire copy of the old system. Anybody else take that long?

Catalina is one of the most significant upgrades ever For MacOS. The biggest change is that it has repartitioned your system disk into 2 volumes, a read-only volume that contains MacOS itself, and a data volume for everything else. Normally this difference is hidden from you, but if you open the drive in Disk Utility you can see the new layout. That probably took some time, as it had to do it "in place" without disturbing your existing storage content. It also added several levels of protection, that you can see if you go to System Preferences, Security & Privacy. You will likely have to visit that spot a number of times to add permissions for some of your 3rd party apps. For example, you need to explicitly add "full disk access" to apps that need it (like Carbon Copy Cloner and VMware Fusion) and screen recording access, which Fusion requires. Pay that control panel a visit, it's quite enlightening. Also check iCloud settings, as that has changed significantly, including the ability to offload content from your system disk to iCloud.