I have just received my new M3 iMac and have set it up successfully and migrated all data from a Time Machine backup. BUT I cannot sync my iPhone 12 Pro using the latest iOS 17.3.1) via USB. I do NOT use iCloud. All my calendar data on the phone has been deleted (it is intact on the computer); the contacts data is intact on the phone, but does not sync. Help!
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13
Contacts, Calendars, Notes, Reminders are not part of a backup and do not sync device to device because they sync to email servers. So if you add the email accounts to your iPhone that you have on your Mac they will sync.
It’s been true for a long time. 10 years ago you could select it manually, but it became the default quite a while ago.
Regarding your gmail problem, can you access gmail by going to https://mail.google.com? If you can, you probably have 2 factor authentication enabled for gmail, and to access gmail from a non-Google app you need to create an app-specific password or switch to Passkey (software) or Security Key (hardware dongle) authentication. Google is aggressively moving away from passwords. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/security?hl=en to see if that may be the issue.
The app-specific password worked to link Mail with my Gmail account; thanks for the tip. However, the inability to sync persists. A few days ago I spent ~3 hours on the phone with two Apple support agents to no avail (and the more senior of them gave me a couple of pieces of misinformation that muddied the waters). I have restored Calendar data to the phone by exporting each of my calendars, emailing the files to myself, then opening the resulting files on the phone. But nothing syncs, and I am back to the ridiculous position of needing to update two computers and a phone by mailing individual entries to myself and downloading them one by one.
Thanks. I knew that about Notes, but not the others. Was that always true? Anyway, Google isn't letting me enter my Gmail password on the Mac. So I'm stuck right now.
Cannot sync iPhone with brand new iMac via USB. (I do NOT use iCloud)
