Your iPhone has never been backed up to this computer.

I tried all the suggestions, creating a new backup directory, but although the backup folder was created no backup file was created!

So, I don't recall disabling backups but maybe I did by accident one day. Anyway the ENABLE BACKUPS line is what you want to use. Close iTunes then open up Terminal, copy paste the line that starts with "defaults" and press enter. Reopen iTunes.

to ENABLE backups

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled

Once I'd done this, I was able to do a "Backup now" and a sync. I'd been getting a bit desperate up 'til then!

I hope this might be of help to someone :-)

I had the exact same problem, and had the most recent iTunes update. Updating the phone in my case fixed it. It backed up once I updated the phone. I have an iPhone 5s.

I have the same problem. When I backup my device, it saves the backup exactly as it is supposed to, in exactly the folder that it is supposed to. But iTunes can't seem to find it there, and after every "successful" backup, I get the same "Your iPhone has never been backed up to this computer" message.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes. I've restarted my iPhone. Shoot, I've even tried it before and after updating from iOS 10 to iOS 11. I've also done the trick where I remove the original "backup" folder to let iTunes make a new one, neither helped. I've created a symbolic link to move the backup folder location (which was successful at moving the backup but not at having iTunes recognize it).

I'm stuck, there seems to be very little current info on how to fix this problem, unfortunately.

I've had the problem for 3 years, since I bought an iPhone 6. I can't even remember what trick I had used to migrate my data from the old iPhone 4 to the iPhone 6. Today I bought an iPhone X and I've been trying in vain to migrate for several hours. As reinitialized the iPhone X several times and migrated the SIM card back and forth between the 6 and the X the SMS I received arrived alternatively on both phones, so I will lose some of them. I still can't use my new iPhone X. This is infuriating! Android does this quite simply by placing the new phone next to the old one and all the content is transferred. With the iPhone, only the settings are transferred, for the rest we are stuck with iTunes or iCould which are not working...

I too did not get into using Apple products to have to do my own tech support to fix problems that shouldn't exist. I'm desperately trying to backup my iPhone before going to a Genius Bar appointment about my battery and I NEED a backup.

Hi,

You were able to resole the problem?

I've been having the same issues with all our apple devices. This started happening after one the recent updates. None of our phones and ipads are backing up to the computer even though I am backing them up. It tells me it back up is complete but when I plug the phone in again it says it has never been backed up to computer. I'm running windows 7. I wonder if that's the problem. Going to try the solution above and see if it works.

Thank you Jeffrey,

The same thing happened to me all of the sudden after an iTunes update. I found all the updates in the folder you mentioned. After renaming the folder iTunes created a new one and the backups showed up perfectly.

It amazes me how a company that is supposed to be so smart creates such lame and inefficient hopeless programs such iTunes. It can't find anything, it is dumb and each update creates new problems without fixing the old ones.

Thank you Jeffrey and Awilon. The PC folder-rename trick worked for me too just now. I have 6 Ipad generations bought over the past 5+ years, and this Win Itunes backup/restore problem is still the death of me when I try to migrate up to the latest 128 GB Ipad. I have tried Win 7 and Win10 PCs to do a simple backup-old-ipad and restore-to-new-Ipad and failed up to this moment. Now that at least the backup shows on the Itunes 12.4.3.1 (due to your tip), wish me luck on the restore to a 256GB Ipad Pro 9.7. (in all past upgrades, the Folders were hopelessly messed up on the restore). As with Awilon, it baffles me that a company that can make an advanced Ipad, can't build relatively simple PC backup-restore s/w, year after year, with decent informative error messages; it's like Apple contracted Elbonian programmers for their PC work).

Thank you for this. I had been struggling with the same problem and this fixed it. Apple needs more competent programmers and better software QA.

Thanks Jeffrey! Renaming the back up folder helped me as well as restarting iTunes, I believe the re-downloading of iTunes would've been required if I hadn't updated iTunes itself last night ~ so far so good!

Cheers mate!

I'm glad your problem was solved - mine isn't.

I did what you said but when I got to /library/application support there was no MobileSync!

Oh, and I checked my MacBook Air and i have two backups which I copied elsewhere - which proves that I did back up to that Mac.

I have been a Mac user for more than 20 years but am less and less enamoured with them - they are no longer such 'intuitive' devices. And I am not the only one... have a look at this article from The Guardian this week: sums ups what I feel. Here's a flavour: "The distressing news, then, for people who have spent approximately the economic output of Moldova on Apple products over the past two decades, is that Apple in 2016 no longer seems very cool. In fact, it now seems a bit of a mess, as out-of-touch and unfriendly as Mark Corrigan."

And: "And it seems to be on a mission to make everything as incompatible and user-unfriendly as possible. Currently, Apple is selling a whopping 17 different dongles for all the different bits its devices no longer serve properly."

The link is: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/08/all-hail-clippy-with-apple -losing-its-cool-its-finally-microsofts-moment

Meanwhile, I guess I'll have to reload all my music... oh, and the one piece of music my iPhone kept was U2, which I never asked for, didn't want etc etc

If you can't back it up to your computer, you could try backing it up to iCloud