Itunes says my backup encryption password is incorrect although it is correct

The only possibility is that you had made an encrypted backup in the past with a different password. Making a new one won’t replace the old password unless you used the change password feature.

If you haven’t erased the phone yet you can create a new backup with a new password—>About encrypted backups on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

If neither of those work you get unlimited guesses, so try to guess what password you might have entered back when. If you are like most people it will be a password that you reused. And to speed up the process click to change the password and you will be prompted immediately.

Hi Tolengo,

We understand you are having an issue with restoring from your encrypted backup because it is not recognizing your password. We'd love to help. Let's start by completing the steps listed here: About encrypted backups on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to resolve the issue.

Take care

A fresh version of iTunes doesn’t matter; the password is saved on the phone, not iTunes, and it is actually the decryption key. So if you made an encrypted backup on a computer, then made another backup on a completely different new computer the backup password from the first computer would still apply to the backup on the new computer.

When you back up an phone to a new computer for the first time, unless you previously wiped the phone, it knows that a backup password is required and provides what it knows that password to be. If you wiped the phone first then it is essentially a new phone, and a backup of that new phone to a new computer will have no backup password unless you checked Encrypt in iTunes.

When you go to restore an encrypted backup it needs the backup password that was used the very first time that an encrypted backup of that same phone was made. It needs it because the backup is encrypted using the backup password as the encryption key.

Regarding your comment about a new computer with a new iTunes, how can you have an encrypted backup on a new computer that was never used for a backup?

Hi Tolengo,

Those are great questions. In order to restore from an encrypted backup, it will require the password that was set up when the backup was created. You can restore from an iCloud backup and when doing so it will restore whatever content was on the device when the backup was created and it will not require you to use the encrypted iTunes backup. The password iTunes is requesting is the password that was setup when you created the backup, not a password that you are currently using on the device.

Best regards

Hello Tolengo,

Thanks for the additional details. Since we do not keep the passwords stored that was entered, we're unable to provide any additional steps to resolve the incorrect password for the iTunes backup. It is something that the system only keeps up with and if it is not recognized, then the steps in the article provided earlier may help resolve the issue. If it does not, then we'd recommend using an older backup that is not encrypted or an iCloud backup if one is available.

Have a great day!