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User profile for user: NormalGuy
NormalGuy Author
User level: Level 1
16 points

Wifi syncing stopped working

I recently upgraded my Mac Mini (Late 2014) to Catalina. Immediately after upgrading, wifi sync on my ipad 3 and iphone XR were working perfectly. About a week ago, both devices disappeared from the finder. Both will appear when plugged in, but I can't get the wifi sync to work again.


I have tried rebooting all the devices multiple times. All have been updated to the latest OS. I have also tried turning wifi sync on and off on the devices. Nothing is working.


Prior to upgrading, I would occasionally need to quit "AppleMobileDeviceHelper" in the Terminal. But, I don't know how to do a similar troubleshooting step in Catalina. Any help would be much appreciated.

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 20, 2019 9:33 PM

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User profile for user: NormalGuy
NormalGuy Author
User level: Level 1
16 points

Posted on Nov 25, 2019 12:07 PM

I tried all of these items and, unfortunately, they did not work.


BUT, I ended up calling support, getting forwarded to a second level support specialist. He was VERY helpful. He informed me that the "AppleMobileDeviceHelper" is not gone in Catalina (I used to close it in Activity Monitor....not Terminal BTW). But, it wasn't appearing in my Activity Monitor.


We tried a bunch of different things. Eventually, we tried General - Reset - "Reset Network Settings" . This worked on both the iPad and the iPhone. The name of my device when it appeared in the Finder was reset, but I was able to change it back.


Very thankful to have my wifi syncing again.

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User profile for user: NormalGuy
NormalGuy Author
User level: Level 1
16 points

Nov 25, 2019 12:07 PM in response to i_rina

I tried all of these items and, unfortunately, they did not work.


BUT, I ended up calling support, getting forwarded to a second level support specialist. He was VERY helpful. He informed me that the "AppleMobileDeviceHelper" is not gone in Catalina (I used to close it in Activity Monitor....not Terminal BTW). But, it wasn't appearing in my Activity Monitor.


We tried a bunch of different things. Eventually, we tried General - Reset - "Reset Network Settings" . This worked on both the iPad and the iPhone. The name of my device when it appeared in the Finder was reset, but I was able to change it back.


Very thankful to have my wifi syncing again.

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User profile for user: i_rina
i_rina
User level: Community Specialist

Nov 24, 2019 8:00 AM in response to NormalGuy

Hello NormalGuy and welcome to Apple Support Communities.


I see you're having an issue with wireless syncing using a mac running Catalina.


First, there has been a change to the default shell when using Terminal under Catalina., in order to do many processes you'll first need to change the default shell to zsh.


Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac - Apple Support


However, you should not have to be using Terminal to quit the AppleMobileDeviceHelper process in order to sync.


To help isolate the issue, try setting up a new admin user and boot into that for testing.


How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support


Cheers.

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Wifi syncing stopped working

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