Yesterday I installed iOS 17.4 on my iPhone which was running iOS 16. During the initialization phase I turned on “stolen device protection”. After starting up I noticed several things. In the settings app the first item with my name, Apple ID, iCloud was grayed out. Also, FaceTime is grayed out. Looking further I see that “Face ID and Passcode” seems to be missing and Screentime seems to be missing or I cannot find them. Not sure what’s going on or how to resolve this. I thought it might be the stolen device protection where I had to wait an hour because it didn’t know where I was. I waited that hour then I realized I had VPN on which means it would show that I was not where I normally am. I turned off VPN, removed VPN, waited an hour nothing changed, waited overnight nothing changed. What are my options? I can restore iOS 16 using iMazing and try again. Any other thoughts?
I have stolen device protection and all of those things are on. Usually when they are grayed out it’s when you’ve put an account restriction in screen time protection. Settings / Screen time / content & privacy restrictions - look in allow changes.
What happens if you turn off stolen device protection? (It’s on the Settings → Face ID & Passcode page.) Do the options go back to normal?
BTW, I don’t think the VPN should affect your location - your phone’s GPS coordinates won’t change, nor will the set of visible Wi-Fi access points, which are key parts of how location services work on an iPhone.
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Face ID & Passcode does not appear under settings.
That was the problem!!!
Thank you very much.
Off-topic. Could you explain how to do this? I’m a novice with iMazing but I couldn’t find anything in the interface or the documentation that led me to believe I could do this. (I’m assuming “Return your device to the state it was when that backup was made” means data only and not iOS; please correct me if I’m wrong.)
You cannot. Once iOS is upgraded it cannot be downgraded to a version that still isn’t signed for that model. No version of iOS 16 remains signed by Apple for installation on any model of phone that can run iOS 17. Not even with iMazing.
I have never done it, however, I would think that “Return your device to the state it was when that backup was made” includes the OS. That is a good question for iMazing.
If you have upgraded iOS, you can’t go back, but you can restore your apps and data to the device’s existing OS installation.
If you have not yet upgraded, you shouldn’t be forced to upgrade it as a part of restoring from your backup. Just make sure you choose the right option. In the Finder, this would be the one to restore a backup, not the one to restore your device (which will wipe it and install the latest compatible version of iOS).
I don’t think iMazing includes the ability to wipe/reinstall iOS. Using it to restore content from a backup should not change what OS the device is running.
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I think you can go back to earlier iOS version by using DFU mode, provided the version you are going back to is still signed. I did it recently.
Yes, but Apple usually stops signing an OS installer about a week after the next version ships. So the time window for downgrading is very narrow, and never extends further back than the previous version.
Update: And it just happened today, 7 days after the 17.4 release, Apple has stopped signing 17.3.1:
Thank you. That’s what I expected even though I hoped for a solution.