Lost Password to iPhone Backup

I had to restore my almost new iphone from an i tunes back up on my computer and I got the same question.

As I didn't recall setting any password I tried everything. Finally i just tried my user pw on my macbook, the one I always use to unlock my macbook and...IT WORKED!! : )

Jessi, you are a God-send!! I have been going crazy trying everything... and I mean EVERYTHING that everyone else has been suggesting. I whipped out my very first passwords without numbers/symbols and even looked up "iOS password" in the keychain. But, it was "iPhone backup password" (apparently set and forgotten back in 2015!) that did the trick! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Lawrence,

Thank you for putting together this compilation. Priceless!

Let me add my story, since it may actually be helpful to more than the few people who happened to use the same passwords...

Yesterday I picked up a new iPhone X. It is replacing my iPhone 6. I have been backing up my iPhones to my Mac for years, and had it set to encrypt the backup so that it would retain passwords and other credentials. In the past, when I exchanged my iPhone 4S for a new one (warranty), and when I upgraded from iPhone 4S to iPhone 6, I backed up the old iPhone, connected the new iPhone, and did a restore. I didn't need to enter a backup file password to do this.

But for the iPhone 6 to iPhone X upgrade, I backed up the iPhone 6, connected the iPhone X, and went to restore it, as usual. But I was prompted for the backup file password. Like others, I tried all the possible passwords I could think of, and none of them worked.

But I solved it. I backed up my iPhone 6 to iCloud. During this backup process, I was not prompted for any password. Then I wiped the iPhone X, and during the setup process, after adding my iCloud info, I selected the option to restore my information from an iCloud backup. I selected this...and after it started...IT PROMPTED ME FOR A PASSWORD!

But, in this case, it turned out to be the same password for the lock screen on my iPhone 6. So, by default, perhaps the iCloud backup selects the lock screen password of the device it is backing up, as the password for the backup file as well. So, I was able to restore my iPhone 6 backup to my new iPhone X.

I hope this is helpful to others.

-rb

RBNetEngr wrote:

But, in this case, it turned out to be the same password for the lock screen on my iPhone 6. So, by default, perhaps the iCloud backup selects the lock screen password of the device it is backing up, as the password for the backup file as well. So, I was able to restore my iPhone 6 backup to my new iPhone X.

You don't need to enter a backup password to restore an iCloud backup, as the iCloud ID and password already had to be entered. But you do need to enter the phone' unlock passcode to allow access to the phone's contents.

ApparentlyApple has no plans to fix this// Typical....

Fix what?

Users who have bad memories? Who deny all responsibility for their situation and look to blame others?

Do you have a question? You have replied to a piece of this conversation that is over 6 years old. Have you read any other part of this?

Ko0Ps wrote:

I Just Had This Problem Turns Out That Password Is Your Computer Password You Use to Log In To Your Computer

That’s because it was the password that you entered twice when you made the first encrypted backup. Look near the top of this page to see some passwords that other users entered the first time they made an encrypted backup.

For anyone with this issue still, I just finally found the password. iTunes new default password is 987654321. I was pretty upset that it took me about a week to try all of my passwords, use multiple cracker programs, then to find this out was just ridiculous. So if anyone can't get theirs, try this password.

I suggest reading the thread you have posted to; it would be quite enlightening. There is no "default backup password" - if the password was 987654321 that's because whoever made the first encrypted backup entered that password - twice. I've also catalogued many of the passwords that people have discovered was the one they entered, and none of them are 987654321.

trenzalore's answer works. You have to click "Encrypt iPhone backup" and enter a password (and verify it). Once you do this, you enter the password and the backup processes. This is not something I would expect from Apple. Totally counter intuitive and not well documented.

You have 70 pages of help on this forum with several recommendations about passwords you can try. Unless you can figure out what the password is, you won't be able to use the backup. Do you have an iCloud backup of your device? If so, use that instead.

GB

This one bit me bad. I am summarizing my 4.5 hour saga in case any of this is useful to anyone. As usual a few things went wrong to get me in trouble.

My iPhone 6 from 2014 was stolen, so I bought a new iPhone 8 in March, 2018. I went to set it up and chose "Restore from iTunes backup." Fortunately I had backed up my old phone only days before, so I knew this would be a breeze. I am a model customer: I keep my software up to date, I do backups, I know my passwords. What could go wrong?

1. FAILED SOFTWARE UPDATE: After connecting to my laptop, I started by trying to update the phone to the latest version of iOS. The update failed twice with iTunes crashing unceremoniously. *Sigh*. Well, no matter, I'll get the phone set up and then update software. (Big mistake!)

2. ASKED FOR PASSWORD: Restoring from the backup requires a password? I didn't know that. What password? I tried a bunch of options, Googled around, found nothing that worked. I had no idea my backups were encrypted. How do I find out if they are really encrypted?

3. CHECK IF BACKUPS ARE ENCRYPTED: From the iTunes menu at top of screen, choose "Preferences" then "Devices". You should see a list of backups you have made. IF they have a little pad lock next to them, your backups are encrypted. Argh -- I had a pad lock. I must have set up encryption 3.5 years ago and forgotten.

4. CALLED APPLE SUPPORT: "I have encrypted files and none of my passwords work -- what should I do!" The support person tried hard, but she didn't end up getting me out of my fix. Encryption works, and if your password is decent, is essentially unbreakable. That is how it is *supposed* to be. I was seriously disappointed that I would have set up encryption without saving the password.

5. BUT YOUR LAPTOP REMEMBERS PASSWORD: If you open the Keychain Access app on your laptop and search for iPhone backup, it will reveal the encryption key you used if you type in your laptop password. This should have been my salvation. Didn't work. The support person was surprised I didn't have it in my keychain, and basically said "nothing we can do."

6. NOT YOUR CURRENT LAPTOP, YOUR OLD ONE!: After I hung up, it occurred to me that my phone was so old I set it up on a previous laptop. I dug out that old laptop and lo and behold, my iPhone backup password was available in my Keychain Access app! Great news! You could ask, why didn't that information propagate to keychain on my newer laptop? Who knows?

7. STILL NO LUCK: I was a bit amazed because that password was one of the ones in my file that I had already tried. I tried again several times with several variants of caps and decoration to no avail. I was about to completely give up when I tried one last time and noticed something.

8. THERE ARE TWO ERROR MESSAGES THAT LOOK ALMOST IDENTICAL: Yes, that's right. Typing in the wrong encryption password and the correct one gave error messages that looked *almost* identical. Same type of box pops up, same font, same length paragraph. After you have tried 100 passwords (literally) you aren't reading the error message any more, you just see it pop up and try the next one. So the error message was now that the backup was "corrupted or incompatible." OK, that's serious progress. I know I have the right password. What now? I doubt the file from last week is corrupted -- I'm going with incompatible.

9. IOS SOFTWARE UPDATE: How long do they keep the phones sitting on the shelf before they sell them? It occurred to me that my new iPhone 8 might have older software than my old iPhone 6, which was up to date. Remember step 1? I *did* start by trying to update the software and failed miserably. But if you trying to restore a backup from a NEWER iOS to a phone with an OLDER iOS, it doesn't work, and the error message is opaque. So now I rebooted my laptop, verified iTunes was up to date (it was already) and tried again to update iOS on the new phone. It worked this time.

10. SUCCESS: With iOS up to date, I did a factory reset on the phone (I had tried so many things by now), started over, chose "Restore from iTunes backup", entered my (correct!) encryption password, and everything worked smoothly.

ANY of the following would have saved a serious amount of time:

- If the keychain info from my older MacBook Air had propagated correctly to my newer MacBook Air. Isn't it supposed to?

- If the support person had asked "Is this the computer you first backed up your phone to?"

- If the error message had just come out and said "You are trying to restore a version 11.2.6 backup to an iPhone running iOS 11.2.5. Please update your iOS first." Saying it is corrupt or incompatible in a long, wordy error message that looks almost like the bad password error message was NOT helpful.

- If the software update of the new iPhone had not failed (twice) since that is the VERY FIRST thing I tried to do, knowing that sometimes there can be problems if you don't. I still have no idea why that failed.

Any one of those things would have saved me hours. Apple can't save me from all forms of stupidity, but this is a case where the error messages were especially unhelpful. The result was rather infuriating, but at least in the end, I did get everything set up, and the iPhone 8 is beautiful.

If you have found this page, you are probably in a world of pain, and I hope this helps. I will try to post this where you can find it. Good Luck out there!

Well written response. I've been there too, but 6 is new to me.

I stopped upgrading via iTunes about a year ago. It kept taking me back to step 0 with its persistent malfunctioning. I upgrade iOS from iOS only now.

Cheers

Thank you for your report, and I'm glad you got it working.

As to why Keychain did not get copied, I'm not really sure. Did you set up the new computer from a Time Machine backup of the old computer? Is the new computer logged in to the same iCloud account as the old computer? If it is, in iCloud Settings on both computers, was Keychain turned on, which would be required for Keychain data to sync between them?

Thanks for the response, Lawrence.

It was 3 1/2 years ago -- I'm sure the fault lies with me not setting up the new Mac properly somehow, but I do not remember the details. I have been iCloud resistant in the past (I thought I'd give Apple a few years to work out security issues) but I increasingly see the virtues.

Thanks,

Doug

Yeah, I would have upgraded from the iPhone itself, but it was still in "I'm not set up yet" mode and I had no option to do that.

I guess the workaround would have been "Set up as new iPhone", upgrade, lobotomize, start over. I didn't think of that at the time.