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How to view an iPhone backup on macOS Catalina and higher

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How to view an iPhone backup on Mac - macOS Catalina and higher

In macOS Mojave, Apple introduced new security measures to keep your data safer.

One such measure means that to access, view or extract data from an iPhone backup on your Mac, apps require permissions. For this reason, to use iBackup Extractor to extract photos, contacts, messages and more from your iPhone backup, you'll firstly need to give permission. This article will show you how.

Follow the steps below to view an iPhone backup on your Mac running macOS Catalina or newer...

  1. From your Launchpad, open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access.
  2. Scroll down and click the "+". If prompted, enter your password to allow changes.
    (On macOS Sonoma and earlier, you'll need to click the lock icon before being able to click "+".)
  3. Select iBackup Extractor from the list and click Open to grant Full Disk Access.
  4. Close the window and open iBackup Extractor to view your iPhone backup content.
Free iBackup Extractor Download for Mac
How to retrieve Photos from iPhone backup on Mac

Detailed Information

As mentioned, iBackup Extractor requires your permission to access your iPhone backup files on a Mac running macOS Catalina and higher. It's easy to give this permission - here's how...

Open the Launchpad from your Dock and launch System Preferences from its icon.

System Preferences Mac

Click 'Security and Privacy'. Before you can make changes here, you'll need to click the lock icon at the bottom of the window.

Security and Privacy Mac

Next, scroll down the list on the left and choose 'Full Disk Access'.

Click the '+'. You may need to enter your password at this point. If so, hit '+' again after your password is accepted.

Full Disk Access Mac

Find iBackup Extractor in the list of applications, click it and hit 'Open'. This will give the program the permissions it needs to access your iPhone backups.

iBackup Extractor permissions

You can now close this System Preferences Window and open iBackup Extractor. The software will now locate your iPhone backups, allowing you to browse their content and extract any data you need!


A final note: iBackup Extractor does not use these permissions to store or share any of your data. The software simply allows you to access backups and extract data to your computer.

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Publisher: Wide Angle Software