iphone fails to sync on my mac mini
i am deeply frustrated as this problem has plagued me for a long time and only gets worse.
I have iphone XS and mac mini m2 - both are up to date on software.
in efforts to fix this I have factory restored both the iphone and mac and in both cases did not restore any data from backup just in case what i might be restoring could be causing issue.
I have restarted both devices and issues still persists...but sometimes it does help...point is i should not have to restart my device each time i want to sync.
here are my steps
in finder, on sidebar i click on iphone....which finds it via wifi
the spinning wheel "loading" apears and sits there for a while, maybe after 4 to 5min...the sidebar > iphone vanishes. its like the finder just crashes and dumps me out...now there is no iphone on sidebar, completely gone
so now I force quit Finder
open finder
and iphone reappears on sidebar
now its rinse n repear. this dance goes on, over and over
i have to relaunch the finder several times....sometimes it takes 10 to 15 times
sometimes after 15min of trying tog et finder to sync i give up.
sometimes...after a very long loading....the option to sync finally appears. when the option to sync finally appears i can go to next step
i click on sync and now it goes gray, meaning it acknowledges so i hit the sync button but nothing happens
and stays there for about 5min - i can see the long progress bar to left of sync button is animating.
and finally states "the selected device could not be found"
the iphone is still on sidebar but i cant do anything, i click on my documents folders to put focus elsewhere
so there are 2 major problems, one is it simply cant connect to iphone
if it does go to next step where i click on sync button, that fails also
i cant predict sometimes it takes 5min of relaunching finder to get to to sync and other times it like 15min of effort which finally works.
if after all that the sync does actually begin - there is another gay process i must do to get it doing...
once the sync actually begins it states - skip backup - i have to hit the skip button at least a dozen times.
if i click on once...it ignores and begins doing the backup
there is no way i could find to disable backup...there is no option to simply avoid backup
i want to avoid backup because it adds like 15min to the whole ordeal...backup is extremely slow for some reason.
all my data is on my main drive. not using usb or external device.
so i mash the skip button after a dozen clicks on goes to next step...
here it sits for a good 8 to 10min ...no i'm not exaggerating!! lol
i found a trick
i open activity monitor and kill the app mdcrash report tool
once i kill this app the process begins
it finally syncs 1 picture.
i use instagram to post images i edit on my mac via photoshop but i have to sync my iphone so i can upload it from my iphone.
what can i do to fix this sync problem.
if i use an official iphone cord its the same problem but way less an issue, meaning finder 1 in 3 times which start the sync right.
so there is something via cable thats more realiable than using wifi.
iPhone XS, iOS 18