New MacBook Air is not showing option to allow iphone notifications

This bug was incredibly frustrating. Based on the comments in this thread, it appears to be related to the migration assistant. Even creating a new user account didn’t resolve the issue for me.

To fix it, I backed up my data using an external SSD, erased all data, and reset my Mac to factory settings. Then, I reinstalled it without using migration assistant, as if it were a new device. This approach worked, and the bug was resolved.

Later, I transferred my files back to my Mac from my external SSD without using migration assistant.

The downside is that I had to reconfigure all my settings and preferences from scratch. However, it took me less time than I had anticipated.

I’m glad I took the time to do this. I missed receiving notifications from my iPhone, especially Duo Mobile login approval requests.

Hello,

If your devices could get notifications before an OS or iOS update, log in to your iCloud web page at https://www.icloud.com. Restart your iPhone and Mac, and everything should work like before. I do this routinely every time there’s an operating system update on either of my devices. I don’t see the reason for changing any previous settings (you could ensure everything is set as before the notifications outage). Apple does some machine login acknowledgment via browser with iCloud, and everything will work as expected. 

Cheers.

Same exact issue here as well. Of note, widgets from iPhone are broken too in addition to this.

Was on M3 Air and migrated via Thunderbolt to a M2 Max Macbook.

Summary:

M3 Air, original login:

Mirroring - Works

Handoff - Works

iPhone Notification Mirroring - Works

iPhone widgets on Mac - Works

Migrated Max from M3 -> Thunderbolt connection on my migrated login:

Mirroring - Works just fine

Handoff - the little app icons show up for handoff work just fine

iPhone Notification Mirroring - does not work.

iPhone widgets on Mac - does not work

Of note on the migrated Max - I created a new account, logged into my iCloud and all the functionality is now working.

Mirroring, Handoff, Notifications, Widgets. All good - on the migrated mac. But it's not the account I want to be on, I have a ton of preferences/settings/logins that would be a nightmare to move over, and I don't want to deal with the potential pitfalls of unix UID 502 vs 501

I have created a support ticket with zero traction. I have gone through multiple hard drive wipes -> migrations at this point. Done every combination of logging on/off my iCloud account in combination of wiping the connection for phone mirroring/handoff/and all that. I'm sad. I miss my notifications.

I can confirm my App Store is logged in as me as well. I've tried to nuke some settings to no avail. Went to latest dev beta and back to no luck either. I'm at a loss and am sad about it

I have the same exact issue. I’ve been working on this issue with them since mid/late March. At the time no one reported it. We did everything that they thought it would fix the issue (log out, log in, wipe out Mac, reinstall macOS from scratch, create new user accounts, and so on) at least twice a week for a couple of weeks in a row and nothing fixed it. They took logs of it at least two times and the conclusion was “we don’t know what the issue is. So far there’s no fix. We don’t know when a fix will come. Senior engineering is working on it but there is no ETA for the fix.” Last I’ve heard from them was April 11th.

I know it’s not the end of the world but it’s so frustrating when you buy the latest products and they’re not working as advertised.

I have the same problem for months after migrated to Macmini M4, the notification from iphone and iphone widgets were broken.However now I might find a simple solution. Just find another iphone, login with the same icloud account you are using on the Mac, than you shoul see there are two iphones in system preference-> desktop and dock-> widgets. Select the new iphone you just logged in and then select back to the iphone you want to use. Now you should see the notification from iphone is showing up. Log out the icloud account on the second iphone then every thing should be working.

I finally caved end of last week. Used chatGPT to help me know how to backup things I was most worried about restoring on a fresh setup without using Time Machine backups. I spent 6 hours one evening and then several other hours off and on the next couple days but I am all up and running with everything I cared about and the good news is the iPhone notifications are working again, what a relief! Was it worth it? I guess, as I sadly really love that feature and also wanted the upcoming live activities that also rely on it. Should we have had to go through this to get it resolved? no way! Shame on Apple for not addressing this with the growing number of folks affected, but it sure seemed clear this could sit another year untouched and I was frustrated all the time not being able to use it.. Thanks to the others in here who did the same and motivated me to go for it.. Good luck to the rest of you..

Yes, though I suspect the model doesn't matter since notifications work again if I create a new user.

I also upgraded my computer recently and did a transfer using the Migration Assistant. It seems like something there caused this bug. Creating a new user account seems to have fixed the issue, but I don't really have the time to migrate my user accounts. Reported a bug and hoping Apple provides a fix since migration of user accounts is not trivial. Upgrading to 15.4.1 does not fix the issue.

Same. I bought an external drive and copied everything off. Back to factory defaults. Working now to install all my apps and set the MacBook settings to my liking. Not going to lie, very very time consuming. But I desperately wanted my iPhone notifications.

I also have the same issue with my new MacBook Air M4. It connects to my iPhone 12 Mini via iPhone Mirroring, but I can only enable "Notifications from iPhone" when I search in the Mac settings. And when I close the settings, it disables itself.

Today I updated macOS to 15.4.1 and iOS to 18.4.1, but the problem still persists. However, this time I'm able to see a list of iPhone apps that I can mirror notifications from. I didn't see this list before.

Wow, this actually worked!

I luckily have a work iPhone; I had to remove the management profile to make it show up in Widgets, but I did exactly as you said. I then quit System Settings and reopened it and the iPhone notification settings are now showing up!

I also just tried a test notification by logging into YouTube in a private browsing window and my iPhone notifications are indeed appearing on my Mac again.

Thanks so much for this suggestion. I'm glad I've been checking this thread regularly and I hope others see this. I also strongly suggest that we all send a bug report to Apple via the below webpage. It would be worth mentioning this fix so they can look into it further.

Feedback - macOS - Apple

It seems like macOS 26 indeed fixed the issue. Revoke iPhone mirroring access and then restart both devices before allowing it again. This fixed my issue.

Steps to reproduce:

Open iPhone mirroring - > Settings -> Revoke access to "DeviceName"

Restart both iPhone and mac

Open iPhone mirroring and follow the steps to allow access and notifications

This should fix the issue.

This is driving me crazy. It's clear from this thread that this is a bug that affects anyone who's done a restore from time machine migrating from one Mac to another. I had this feature working perfectly on my old macbook Air and then migrated to a mac Mini. Ever since then, on every updated build of macOS, I don't have this feature even showing in settings, notifications. But, if I search "iphone" in settings, I find the feature and can toggle it on but only until I close settings app and it's then off and gone, again. There has got to be some sort of real solution or workaround other than creating an entire new account on macOS. I have way too many settings to even consider doing that. Please, if anyone has found a way to get around this, let us all know! This is so frustrating!

I was having this same issue earlier today, later I bought a iCloud storage plan and I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not but when I bought the storage this feature started working again right at the same time. If someone else has this problem I'd say try buying the cheapest storage option and see if it works