How to force an iPhone to eject

Question

How to force an iPhone to eject

My Mac says that it's been syncing with the iPhone for about four days, and I haven't found a way to stop the process.

• I've tried right-clicking and force eject the iPhone from the Finder sidebar. Nothing happens.

• I've shut down the iPhone and then turned it back on. Nothing happens.

• I've connected the iPhone to the Mac with a physical cable. Nothing happens.

• I've tried to eject it from iTunes. No success.

Mac is running Monterey 12.0.1

iPhone is running 15.6.1

iPhone 8

Posted on Sep 7, 2022 5:43 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

LD150

Level 10

101,424 points

Sep 7, 2022 1:22 PM in response to chuckbo-again

Also with Activity Monitor:

Go > Utilities > Activity Monitor
Choose Finder (you can use the search bar in the upper right corner to find it quicker)
Click the Close button (X) to stop Finder.

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Answer 2

LD150

Level 10

101,424 points

Sep 7, 2022 12:06 PM in response to chuckbo-again

Sorry its a mac not a PC!

But what about antivirus? If you have any get rid.

You can relaunch the finder in the Force Quit menu, or log out of your Mac session normally.

If necessary hold the power button down

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Answer 3

LD150

Level 10

101,424 points

Sep 7, 2022 6:13 AM in response to chuckbo-again

It sounds like you have the sync over wifi checked on in the General tab of the iTunes panel. Connect by usb then turn off the wifi sync option

Or at the very least turn off the automatic sync

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Answer 4

LD150

Level 10

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Sep 7, 2022 1:17 PM in response to chuckbo-again

You know antivirus is totally unnecessary on Macs?

You might try the log out or the power button otherwise you are held in its grasp forever.

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Answer 5

LD150

Level 10

101,424 points

Sep 7, 2022 7:43 AM in response to chuckbo-again

Yes. Keep trying even if you need to restart the phone and PC

NB You should disable any antivirus or security programs on the PC temporarily.

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Answer 6

LD150

Level 10

101,424 points

Sep 7, 2022 2:39 PM in response to chuckbo-again

If it was me I would hold down the power button til it went off.

Or you can ask the same question in the relevant MacOS forum.

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Answer 7

Sep 7, 2022 12:21 PM in response to LD150

Sorry, I meant to tell you that the force-quit to reboot the Finder didn't solve the problem.

The antivirus is off.

I'm trying to avoid the hard restart. That used to be the only way to solve this problem on older Macs. I expect the M1 to not have this problem. The only good thing is that on the older Mac, when I had this problem, the fan would kick in and never turn off.

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Answer 8

Sep 16, 2022 2:55 PM in response to LD150

And it's not just an inconvenience because it's hurting my battery performance because the Finder is always using significant energy trying to sync endlessly.

I used the power button to force shut it down. When the Mac restarted, it saw the iPhone and started trying to sync with it again. And it's been in the loop syncing for about seven hours.

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