"Enter your passcode to trust this computer and start a backup." Every time iPhone is on charge.

"...It doesn't randomly sync with your phone while it's on battery, that'd be ridiculous. The "show when on Wi-Fi" will obviously not affect iPhone battery life..."

You are probably correct regarding the time it is actually backing up, but in the context of the original question

"...routinely asks me to type in my passcode to trust this computer and start a backup. This happens whenever the device is put on charge..."

it is is relevant to the discussion.

You would be welcome to answer other questions regularly on the forum. We are all volunteers.

It seems one of those idiotic changes from someone who believes can boost icloud's revenue by making annoying changes in the name of safety and security. I really hope Apple does not let me down with this.

There’s 54 “Me Too”s on this report and I am one of them. I don’t know how truly widespread this problem is, I am guessing most people don’t use iTunes for backups but it is definitely NOT isolated to this single user. I own multiple iOS devices and they ALL are exhibiting this behavior after recent iOS updates.

Apple's servers are protected by two factor authentication and your data is not accessible without your explicit approval or by using a passcode protected trusted device.

If you lost your computer this is presumably to protect your local data from being sync'd to the thief's iphone.

Then shouldn't this "feature" be turned off after a single trust for Macs that have FileVault on? Unless Apple has been skimping on security for their consumer computers. Plus this change doesn't do anything new to prevent local backup data from a computer from being synced TO an iPhone. It doesn't even add any new encryption to an iPhone backup on a computer, which was already encrypted at another layer on top of FileVault. A thief would require all 3: your computer passcode, your FileVault key, and your iPhone encrypted backup password. This only adds the mere appearance of security by requiring a passcode entry that doesn't actually encrypt anything.

In my consumer opinion, it is an update that just cause inconvenience. Apple, please reverese that or allow to modify it in the setings or with the face ID. This update does not change the encryption, it just limit the users who regularly backup phones in their PCs. Sometimes IOS updates bring innovation, but more than often afects a product that was working fine. I wonder how is this feature in droid telephones?

What's interesting is that after the backup, if you disconnect the phone, and a few minutes later reconnect it, as always, it begins to back it up again. And, again asks for the password, which makes no sense because the same phone is connecting to the same computer...and they both know that. So in the end, it looks like this problem is a bug.

And just for fun, as an odd fact that many don't know: we use the term "bug" because, way back when lots of equipment used relay logic, the relays at the time weren't sealed. So, a bug sometimes got into the machine and was sitting between a contact pair when the relay energized, mashing the bug and preventing contact. In time, it became a joke. When a problem showed up the tech would laugh and say, "Time to debug the machine." The term stuck, and is still in use, though few know why.

"....In my consumer opinion, it is an update that just cause inconvenience. Apple, please reverese that or allow to modify it in the setings or with the face ID. ..."

Everyone on here, me, Lawrence, are consumers like you. Apple are not here to read your request. You are welcome to do that on this link. https://apple.com/feedback

If the dropdown does not have your iOS version leave it blank and type it in the text of the feature request.

What I learned after 15 years apple. This kind of bugs will be fixed in the next iOS major release. Live with that.

years ago there was a iOS version where opening camera app stops music, podcast etc playback. For one year!

Well, that is what our friends from Apple are implying; and for me that’s preposterous. I hope is a bug that will be fixed, rather than a reason to consider droid once my iPhone gets useless as usually happens with new versions of IOs.

Although the snide remarks are somewhat funny, you can read the thread and realize how this doesn't increase security whatsoever. The repeated passcode entries provide no encryption nor any sense beyond making automatic local backups impossible, in favor of pushing one to use Apple's iCloud instead.

Well, you are wrong. Data between your device and iCloud is end to end encrypted. Actually, ALL data in and out of an iOS device is end to end encrypted. And iCloud itself is encrypted in storage. The vulnerability is that your Apple ID and password is the encryption key, so it is essential to protect them and use 2 factor authentication.

But it can still be more secure than your computer, which can be stolen or seized by law enforcement.

I wonder about why some setups request the iPhone passcode. Mine doesn’t for any of my 4 iOS devices, so what makes it different? And all of them back up automatically. All on iOS 16.

As mentioned before, the computer can be encrypted with FileVault and your password, and on top of that, the local backup is encrypted with an encryption password. In fact, this is more secure than Apple's iCloud backup, which is not end-to-end encrypted, so "law enforcement" can access your iCloud backup data, but will have a harder time with your backup on your computer.

For your other devices, can you check if they're on iOS 16.1? Maybe they're at a lower version of iOS 16.

Lawrence, Apple’s own support page indicates most iCloud data including backups are not E2E encrypted. Is Apple’s own support page wrong?

iCloud security overview - Apple Support

Here’s the difference between *me* owning my data and Apple owning my data: if LE wants my data, they have to execute a warrant on my property that I will know about and I can challenge in court. If LE wants data from iCloud, it is much easier and I may not even become aware, especially if a court grants a gag request upon Apple not to tell me.