Manage your iOS Devices through the Finder

In this video, we’re going to look at how we manage our iOS devices, our iPhone, and our iPads through the Finder with macOS Catalina. In past versions of macOS, we did this through iTunes. Since Catalina no longer has iTunes, we now need to manage our iOS devices through the Finder. Let’s see how this works.

Let’s go to my Mac. What I’m going to do is I’m going to open up a Finder window here. Now what I’m going to do is I’m going to plug in my iPhone here and watch what happens. Under Locations here, you’re going to see my iPhone pop up. This is where we now manage our devices under Locations in a Finder window.

If you haven’t connected your iPad or your iPhone to your Mac, you may have to click on a couple of buttons and enter a passcode. You got to make sure that your computer trusts the phone and your phone trusts your computer. Once you do that, when you click on your device here, I’m going to click on Dan’s iPhone, you’re going to see I have all of my different management options just like I did in iTunes. Now I’m managing it all through the Finder, a Finder window. Let’s go and make this window a little bit bigger here so we can see everything.

The first thing is that we have my name, the model, and then I can also see how much space is available, and the battery life. Below that, we have our different categories. Right now, I’m looking at my general settings. I can see what iOS version I’m using. If I want to check for an update, I click on Check for Update, and if I want to restore my iPhone, I click on Restore iPhone.

Below that, we have Backups. The first option here by default, we’ll back it up to iCloud. If I want to back it up to my computer, then what I do is I click on the dot here. If I click on Back Up Now, it’s going to back it up to my computer. I can also encrypt that backup. Once I back it up, if I want to restore it, I click on Restore, and then I can also manage my backups. Below that, I have different options. I can prefer standard definition videos when I store them on my iPhone. What does this do? It takes up less space if you’re storing videos on your iPhone. I can show this iPhone when on Wi-Fi. I can also automatically sync this iPhone when it is connected. I can manually manage my music, movies, and TV shows through the Finder, and then I can also convert higher bit rate songs to a lower bit rate. Then what it’ll do is it’ll take up less space.

Then if I want to configure accessibility, I click on Configure Accessibility. I can set if I want to use voiceover, zoom, use black and white display, speak auto-text, and use mono audio. I’m going to cancel here.

I also have different settings for different categories. If I wanted to sync my music, now I’m using iCloud music library. When I click on Music here, I’m not able to sync my music. If I wasn’t using iCloud music library, I’d be able to add music.

Let’s go over to movies. When I click on Movies, I can go and add all my movies. This is what we would see with music if I wasn’t using iCloud music library. From here, if I click on this, what I’m able to do is I’m able to add movies to my iPhone. I can do the same thing with TV shows and podcasts, audios and books, and photos and files. With Info, I can manage how my context and calendars are synced. Again, I’m using iCloud, so when I click on Info, I do not have any settings.

If you’re using iCloud, you probably won’t mess around with this too much, because everything will be stored through iCloud. If you did want to change how your media is managed, if you’re not using iCloud and you wanted to manually manage the media on your iPhone, you now do this through the Finder. All you have to do is plug in your device, and you’re going to find your iOS device under Locations. Click on it, and then you’re able to set all of the different settings. You can back up your iOS device to your computer, you can restore backups, you can do updates, and then you can also manually manage all of your media.

That’s how we manage our iOS devices, our iPads, and our iPhones with macOS Catalina. We now do this through the Finder.