Before heading into any troubleshooting steps, first make sure that it isn’t a problem with the cable. Clean all of your ports of dust and debris if they look dirty. After making sure all of your iPhone or iPad and computer ports are clean, try connecting again. Also, check your cables. If there is something wrong with your Lightning cable, it could be causing intermittent blockage. If nothing changes there are usually a few simple solutions that will resolve the problem.
How do I get iTunes to recognise the device?
A non-recognised Apple device can occur with the newer iOS-based devices. We’ll look at some steps to get iTunes to recognise your iPod, iPhone or iPad.
Check Apple Mobile Device Support
When you install iTunes for Windows you also install a program called Apple Mobile Device Support. To ensure it is installed; If you can’t see Apple Mobile Device Support then you need to reinstall iTunes for Windows. It is less likely for an Apple Mac to be unable to recognise an iPod or iOS device. In this case, you should check the following:
1. Update your software
If you’ve recently purchased a brand new iPhone and are connecting it to an older Mac or PC. A new iPhone will always need the latest version of iTunes, which might not be available on your current operating system. Make sure your iPhone has the latest operating system. Then, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes on your Mac or PC (iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus require iTunes 12.5). Please read this section carefully because your issue is somewhere in this step, it is likely.
Update iTunes on Mac
Your Mac might claim that it is running the latest version of iTunes even though it’s not. That might be because your Mac is running an older version of OS X. iTunes 12.5 requires OS X 10.9.5 or later, which is Mavericks. If you are using a Mac running OS X 10.8 or older, you’ll have to update to at least Mavericks in order to sync a brand new phone.
Update iTunes on Windows PC
Firstly, update your Device Driver, this is usually where the problem lies with Windows users. Updating your driver should solve most issues with iTunes not connecting to an iPhone on a Windows PC.
2. Restart your iPhone and computer
You’ll just need to turn everything off and on again. It’s a tried and true method of clearing out any residual glitches. After restarting all the things, connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer and see if it recognizes it.
3. Manually reset your privacy and location permissions
You might have accidentally hit “Don’t Trust” when prompted “trust it.” This could cause iTunes to not recognize your device. All you have to do is disconnect and reconnect your iPhone to your computer and it will prompt you to trust it again. Or you can reset the permissions manually.
4. Erasing and Restoring
Erasing and Restoring your iPhone and deleting and reinstalling iTunes on your computer. How to delete and reinstall iTunes on your computer You should definitely back up your iTunes library before deleting the app.
How to delete and reinstall iTunes on a Mac
You’ll need your administrator password to change the permissions.
Re-download iTunes. If you need help uninstalling these components on your Windows computer, check Apple’s support guide for additional information.
How to erase and restore your iPhone
Your iPhone will erase itself, restart, and return to the setup screen. See if iTunes recognize it now!
