Level 1

25 points

Backing up iPhone/iPad with Catalina

Updated to Catalina today. I wanted to backed up my iPhone and iPad to try the new finder location for backing up devices. For both devices, I presented with a popup window stating AMPDevicesAgent wants to use your confidential information stored in iOS backup in your keychain. I could allow once, allow always or deny. Since I have no idea what AMPDevicesAgent is I clicked deny. I have never seen this window before when doing a backup on my Mac. Is this something new with Catalina or is this something fishy? Does anyone know what this is all about? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Posted on Oct 7, 2019 6:54 PM

Top-ranking reply

RatleyRambler

Level 1

27 points

Posted on Oct 22, 2019 4:58 PM

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.

View in context

Similar questions

55 replies

C.B.19

Level 1

9 points

Nov 3, 2019 7:08 PM in response to GStormer

Apple has a very large & loyal consumer base due to trusting their mission statement of protecting their customers privacy.

It would be a huge mistake to deviate from this.

Nov 13, 2019 5:14 AM in response to GStormer

The Apple should be set to position itself about the subject, formally

Nov 13, 2019 6:56 AM in response to Tree_Brazil

Your post makes no sense in English.

Dec 22, 2019 2:26 AM in response to GStormer

What am I meant to put in as the password?

Loupita

Level 1

13 points

Oct 10, 2019 6:43 AM in response to GStormer

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.

Oct 10, 2019 7:01 AM in response to Loupita

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.

Oct 10, 2019 11:25 AM in response to GStormer

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.

Oct 10, 2019 12:23 PM in response to sandyfromberkeley

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.

cadolfi

Level 1

13 points

Oct 14, 2019 7:20 AM in response to iwaddo

I just called Apple tech support to ask for sure. At first she acted like it was a standard thing not to worry about. But when I pressed the fact that the keychain houses all my passwords to bank accounts, cc websites etc.... and that I find it odd that they don't have an answer clearly delineating this for the thousands of people upgrading to Catalina, she finally asked a senior advisor. She then came back and said the neither of them recommend it and think its a third party asking for permission and that I should error on the side of denying it. Really?? I said as a business owner myself, I would highly recommend being a bit more preemptive about protecting their customers. Liability wise, to have that many people blindly going through this update and relying on Apple to protect us from having our confidential information jeopardized, they should be taking more steps to clarify if that is really from them or a third party. They are supposedly going to publish something due to "me calling in" lol. For now, I'm saying Deny.

Oct 9, 2019 8:32 AM in response to iwaddo

Open the Music app, Preferences, Advanced and click to reset warnings.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Backing up iPhone/iPad with Catalina