What the heck is this. When I tried to restore my backup from my Mac it asked password which I had set before so long. Then after erasing my iPhone it's giving failing and saying that password for backup is wrong. Shouldn't it warn me before erasing?

You put a password on your backup, whether you remember doing so or not. That’s the only way encrypted backups get created. Either you checked Encrypt Backup, or, if you have a company email account on your phone, your Exchange administrator required it. But either way you were prompted to enter a password - twice. However, that could have been years ago; you are only prompted the first time you made an encrypted backup, you will never be prompted again until you go to restore a backup.

When you entered the backup password if you have a Mac and have Keychain enabled you were given the option of saving the password in Keychain (this is the default). So check Keychain for it.

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.

Note that if you do NOT encrypt your computer backup then the backup will be incomplete; it will not include health data or passwords. iCloud backups are protected by default because they require your Apple ID and password to access, so this is not an issue for iCloud backups.

vipul574 wrote:

Shouldn't it warn me before erasing my iPhone?

Why? First, when you erase an iPhone it has no idea whether or how it is backed up. And it also doesn’t know that you intend to restore a backup; most people who erase their phone have done it to get rid of it, so why would they restore a backup?

I created backup on my iphone 02/07/22. there are witnesses who saw that I never created any password. The next day I could not restore my backup because of missinh password. Which was never created at first place. There is no was, we did not type anything and there was no pop up window which would be there to write in it… We went trough keychain in macbook with apple support and there is nothing. We typed all passwords from the past. It was the first time the phone was backuped, and as we traded it in iStore in I do not have it anymore. I am just so angry when I read advice to remember password I have never created! I am usually very responsible and I have my passwords all typed down on paper, but I KNOW I did not set the passowrd, It was only days ago!! And I really need my photos and data. i dont have it backuped anywhere else. i am desperate. and apple support really does not help. if I succeed I can try to film the whole password-less process and maybe prove that It might happen. but for now I need to wait, what years? Till the program finds a 10 or more multiple combinations digit password?

[Edited by Moderator]

Did you transfer content from a previous phone? If you did, that phone could have had an encrypted backup. The encryption setting is part of a backup, and the password for that previous phone’s backup would carry forward.

Does the phone have a work email account on it? If it does then the backup is required to be encrypted.

Did you make an iCloud backup? They don’t need a passcode, because they are protected by your Apple ID password.

On 02/08/22 so NOT that long ago I created the backup of my phone before trading it in. I have witnesses, my husband and friends. no password was asked, after finishing backup I handed my old iphone to the store. I need my backup and whenever contacting apple support I get answers that I simply dont remember the password. well No, how can I? i did not create any! no solution offered and I need my backup! Well there was one solution (offered on call with apple without naming it) which does not work after 3 days of work! I am just looking for people with the same problem, if there is more of us maybe something happens!)

No icloud packup unfortunately. Yes I had old iphone (5s) which I transfered to this one in 2019, but not by backup to computer, but directly migrated from old phone to new phone. It just does not make sense.

Riadandelion wrote:

No icloud packup unfortunately. Yes I had old iphone (5s) which I transfered to this one in 2019, but not by backup to computer, but directly migrated from old phone to new phone. It just does not make sense.

Still, if you had backed up the old phone, even if you did not restore that backup, if the old phone backup was encrypted that would carry over to the new phone.

No. You're responsible for remembering the password you used to encrypt the backup.