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Option to backup iPhone to Mac greyed out

Just upgraded to an iPhone 15 pro 1T and it synced ok but the Backup section is greyed out.

Mac Studio, macOS 14.1

Posted on Oct 27, 2023 5:50 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 10, 2024 3:15 PM

In case someone else runs into this issue, the fix is to turn off "Find My iPhone" on your iPhone. Then reload the Finder window. After doing that I was able to back up my iPhone to my Mac.

4 replies

Oct 27, 2023 6:13 PM in response to blindmullet

“… the backup section …”?


The only area on an iPhone that’s anything like a “backup section” is at Settings > [your Apple ID] > iCloud > iCloud Backup, and clearly has nothing to do with a backup to a computer.


Please explain exactly what you tried, what you saw, error messages, etc. Also explain what computer is involved, its operating system name and version, whether iTunes is involved and, if so, its version.

Oct 27, 2023 11:19 PM in response to sberman

My apologies. I am running the latest Sonoma 14.1 on my Mac Studio, iOS 17.1 on my iPad 15 Pro 1T. Everything transferred perfectly from my old iPhone 11 Pro but when I connected it back to my Mac Studio, it wouldn't allow me to back it up. I was using the cable that came with the iPhone 15 Pro, so I know that it wasn't the problem. I also tried an Apple Thunderbolt 4 cable with the same results.


I also had to activate another iPhone 15 Pro 512 GB and I had no problem with the backup.


So after powering off both iPhone 15 Pro 1T and my Mac Studio, I got the iPhone 15T to show up on Safari and allowed it to Sync. It took around 5+ hours to complete the sync.


After the sync completed, the Backup was now available and I was able to back up my iPhone 15 1T to my Mac Studio. So I guess the lesson was not to be impatient!


Hope this helps someone else!

Option to backup iPhone to Mac greyed out

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