password to unlock your iphone backup file

Worked for me!!🙂

I sat on this for hours tried every possible passwords except the CURRENT APPLE ID PASSWORD which you use to download apps on all your idevices.. And guess what.. it worked! And in a way it makes sense, because iTunes on your PC or Mac is more than likely connected to the net OR it knows your Apple ID password from your iTunes account on your phone which you are connecting to in order to backup in the first place. Whatever the reason, I thought to post this.. maybe it will help you and save hours of grief and frustration.

I'm stuck on this stupid encrypted backup password problem for ages now. I know I forgot what password I entered for previous backups but I DON'T WANT THE PREVIOUS BACKUPS - I just want to REMOVE THE ENCRYPTED BACKUP OPTION AND CREATE A NEW UNENCRYPTED BACKUP - so why won't POS iTunes let me do this???? Why is it forcing me to remember some old password when all I want to do is create a new backup without a password???? I just want to TURN OFF the option for a NEW backup!!! Hello Apple!! Can't upgrade to IOS7 because of this!!!

And also I just did a clean install of Windows 7 this week and a clean install of iTunes on it so WHY IS THIS ENCRYPTED BACKUP OPTION SET AT ALL HERE????

You can do that by restoring the phone as a New phone. You will naturally lose all of your content, but you can restore most of it from the apps on your computer that you sync the phone to. If it were possible to make an unencrypted backup after you created an encrypted one anyone who stole your phone could simply make an unencrypted backup of your passcode locked phone and see all of your data.

I found this (below) on the internet and it's working on my iphone4 now.

The password used to encrypt the backup file might have been saved to the user's keychain.

1. from /Application/Utilities open the Keychain Access utility
2. make sure that on the left side "All items" is selected under categories
3. in the upper right search field enter "iphone" and then look for a keychain item named "iPhone Backup" of kind "application password". If there is no such item, you´re mostly out of luck
4. double click on the "iPhone Backup" entry and in the new window that will open, click on the "show password" checkbox
5. you will now be prompted to enter your password (the one your user has on your Mac) to show the iPhone backup password; click Allow (once). You should now see the iPhone Backup password in clear text.

Yes this is no use for PC / Windows users though is it. No equivalent keychain storage system in Windows 7.

Ran into same problem--upgrading from iPhone 4s to 5s on PC (windows 7). Only use this PC and iTunes to backup iPhone (really, that is it) and had no idea about an "itunes password" to unlock the backup. Read through this thread and what seems to be the primary suggestion:

guess a bunch of old passwords

I had an idea.....an idea so smart that my head would explode if I even began to know what I'm talking about.

Really, I used my "Apple MobileMe" password--yeah, remember that thing? No? No one does...anyway, that worked for me--makes sense as it would have been the username/password I would have set up when I first joined Apple and set up iTunes.

hey that's it just type in your apple ID password but without capslock on ( no capital letters ).

it works

How do i do that?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1808

to unlock use ur computer password

I used my iTunes password and it unlocked 🙂

The post from DJDCA works!!!! thanks so much 😀

It worked using my gmail account password, which is the email I address I use for my pple ID, tht is so weird.

I have a corporate profile installed on my phone (exchange & mobileiron) and was also having issues that I cannot unlock the password for the encrypted backup. AppleID, corporate mail passcode and old variations did not work.

For me what worked was the iPhone Passcode that was in place when the corporate profile was installed. (Which for my work is alpha numeric).

Hope that helps.