This started happening to me too after upgrading my iPhone 12 Pro from iOS 16.0.2 to iOS 16.1.
I do my backups over WiFi with iMazing so the prompt occurred without context that I was in fact initiating a backup. I thought that iOS had just glitched in a major way when the dialog popped up asking for authorization so I just power cycled my iphone.
It seems to have stopped after entering my iOS password just once.
Nice to know that I’m not alone.
UPDATE November 3, 2022 2:15 AM
Spoke too soon. It just asked me again.
I opened a ticket with iMazing and this is their response:
Thank you for contacting us.
This is a new security feature introduced in iOS 16.1 and iOS 15.7.1 that is designed to prevent unauthorized access to the device, mainly through Wi-Fi backups on trusted computers. You can try to back up the device via Finder or iTunes, you will get the same request.
Unfortunately, this feature can’t be turned off at the moment by Apple design but, hopefully, Apple will add a switch for it in the future. You can send the feature request to Apple on this website: Product Feedback - Apple. The more votes will be added for this feature, the higher the chance that it will be implemented in next versions.
Yeah…I figured it was an Apple problem…and asking once is fine but it oughta remember it after that…or perhaps only ask every couple of months like the Location Services one does. Security to make sure it’s authorized is good…but once (or periodically to re-verify) would be fine.
It gets even better. If you by accident swipe up on the passcode page (yep, you don’t get to use FaceID for this) that appears to dismiss the page and thus cancel the backup.
And since in iOS 13 (not 100% sure about that version number) Apple stupidly removed sync controls from the iPhone General settings, there is no way to tell the iPhone to try again. Your only recourse is to get out of bed, walk through half the house to find your Mac, open a Finder window, and initiate another backup attempt from there by hand.
Thank you, Apple. Yes, we get it. Modern humans use the cloud for everything. Because that’s so much better than systems people control themselves. And already paid you for. And of course on top of paying you thousands of $ for hardware, it’s obvious those people should also be paying you endless subscription fees for “services” just so they get to use your fancy cloud (even though, frankly, it’s an unreliable pile of doo-doo) in spite of their own systems just sitting there and working fine. We should be happy to be allowed to contribute to your revenue stream. Really feel for the plight of your $2T company. Sniff.
Nello, thanks for the reply from iMazing, and the link to the Apple Product feedback site. I’ll definitely send them a request to be able to turn this off. Besides iTunes, I also do backups using iMazing (great program, incredibly useful), and have been encountering the problem there, too.
BTW, thanks to everyone who took the time to investigate this, and reported back; glad to know it Wasn’t Just Me. It frustrates me that I can’t turn this feature off; however, I also feel fortunate – if I did wifi syncs, this would be a full-blown pain in the *ss.
In my opinion, this isn’t just an inconvenience; it is a serious subversion of security for people who do their backups via WiFi.
When iMazing decides it’s time to do a WiFi backup, this authentication screen comes up but it gives no sign what application/service is asking for permission to do the backup.
Unlike a USB backup, I don’t have any context for the this request.
Thus, I’m being asked to blindly approve access to my iOS device. Since iMazing does a WiFi backup daily, I’m going to get this request over and over again until it becomes muscle memory to approve it.
As a result, demanding authentication for each WiFi backup is the perfect cover for a fraudulent request to access my device.
This does seem to be a feature of iOS/iPad OS 15.7.1 - it just recently started happening when I sync to iTunes on my fifth-gen iPad, which is on 15.7.1, but it’s not happening on my iPhone 13. Which seemed strange, since I thought they were both on the same OS version, but I just checked and apparently I haven’t gotten around to updating the iPhone from 15.7.
I suppose I could just update both to 16.1 (which my iPad just barely qualifies for), but in my advanced dotage I keep finding OS upgrades are always more work than they’re worth; features I use regularly get removed, and features I have no use for are constantly shoved in my face. </YellingAtClouds>
Yup. Very annoying when you have idevices throughout your house and are then told (on a TRUSTED COMPUTER) you must enter a password on the device. And it doesn’t provide you enough time to go to the wrong room, and then the right room because your spouse moved the iPad. What is happening is that your security is actually being lessened because the button you hit is ‘cancel’. This probably works OK with someone who has one iPhone that lives in their pocket. I too use iMazing and got the same reply and was provided the website where I could and did complain. Either revert to previous or supply us with an ‘opt out’…
Apple keeps making it ever more difficult to make “local” backups of my iPhone to my iMac. Years ago, when I first bought an iPhone (5s), I wrote a little script that cron would run at 05:00 to back up my phone and sync my calendar, contacts etc. It worked just fine and took care of backing up my phone without my having to think about it. Unfortunately, when I replaced my 5s with an iPhone SE 2020, my script stopped working. The problem was that the backup would not talk to the phone while the phone was locked. That was a nuisance, but I just switched to running my script manually every morning after unlocking my phone. Now, I also have to key in a passcode eveyr time, which is even more of a nuisance. I am a sysadmin by profession, and I prefer to keep my backups under my own control rather than consigning them to someone else’s cloud. I guess that makes me some sort of dinosaur.
I would argue that they’re making it ever more difficult to automate the backup system. And I agree, it’s a pain if you want to automate the process to a service other than Apple’s.
But for people like me who have always done it manually (connect a USB cable, open a Finder window, select device, click Sync), having to enter my passcode isn’t a whole lot of additional work.
It’s not just that they made it more difficult on the Mac side. They made it outright impossible on the iPhone side.
You used to be able to lunch backup/sync from the iPhone itself under Settings > General. With iOS 13 or so they silently removed those controls. Big mistake since there is no need to use USB when syncing to your own Mac (especially not when Lightning uses dirt slow 480 Mbps USB2). Wifi does the trick just fine but that means now Mac and iPhone could be potentially be quite a bit apart. Who wants to wander to their stashed away Mac when all it used to take was a tap on your iPhone?
every time the phone is connected to the computer, it prompts for the pin to “trust this computer”. every stinking time. this phone and computer have been merrily syncing since they were purchased more or less this time last year and now they’ve got trust issues?
I’m running 12.6.1 on my Intel MacBook Pro, and and 16.1 on the iPhone 13. I had no trust issue prior to 16.1.
I found some articles on the web suggesting that some iPhone resets might solve the issue. So I reset Network Settings and Location & Privacy. Following this, I had to go through some additional dialog boxes to establish trust. But the issue persisted.
Of course the resets also prompted me to re-join my Wi-Fi network and permit location to be used again in some apps. So I think the resets did what they were supposed to do. They didn’t fix the trust issue, though.
Making iPhone backups with the Finder still works. I just have to type my passcode each time now to establish trust again for the moment.
I haven’t reported this to Apple as of yet. But I might if I don’t see much attention elsewhere. I’m rather hoping this is addressed in an upcoming macOS or iOS update.
I usually need to Trust, but I’m running iPadOS 15.6.1 and macOS 11.7. It also happens with my iPhone and I assume (it is not within reach right now) that it is running iOS 15.6.1. In other words, the issue predates iOS 16, at least for me.
If I were to list the anomalies and issues I have with iOS and macOS, this wouldn’t even pass the qualifying round, let alone make it to the medal stand. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but many things that used to work have stopped working, and there are new things that have never worked (for me).
