What is AMPDevicesAgent?

Many Mac users have experienced that an AMPDevicesAgent popup message keeps asking them to enter their keychain passwords. The notification message says:

AMPDevicesAgent wants to use your confidential information stored in iOS backup in your keychain. To allow this, enter the login keychain password

The message does not specify if this is Apple’s notification or malicious software notification. The notification asks users to enter their passwords to access your keychain which holds all your saved passwords and other sensitive data like credit/debit card information. If users deny access, The error pop-up keeps on asking your password again and again. Moreover, users are not clear why the process needs the keychain access. So users may have security issues and should they give AMPDevicesAgent access to your keychain.

AMPDevicesAgent? What is it?

AMPDevicesAgent in Catalina is a new background process in macOS Catalina responsible for the synchronization of iOS or iPadOS devices using Finder. This agent is not malware but part of the macOS ecosystem. This functionality was split from iTunes in macOS Catalina, and such helper code has been split into different processes like AMPDevicesAgent. You can confirm this by going to the activity monitor, it will show up as an Apple process. It is located at:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AMPDevices.framework

AMPDevicesAgent wants to use your confidential information

The AMPDevicesAgent wants to use your confidential data stored in “iOS backup” in your keychain. Enter the login keychain password to allow this.

The message is displayed when AMP devices agent in macOS Catalina needs to perform a local backup of all connected devices over Wi-Fi when the relevant option is enabled in the device’s settings in Finder. This iOS Backup is an encrypted backup of your iPhone iOS device or iPad iPadOS device.

If you don’t know the keychain password, the keychain password is your login password.

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