Make Sure Your Mac Recognizes Your iPhone

1. Plug your iPhone into a USB port on your Mac using a Lightning cable (also known as a charging cable).
2. In the upper left-hand corner of your Mac’s screen, click on the Apple logo.
3. Click About This Mac.
4. Click System Report…
5. On the left-hand side of the menu that opens, click USB, which is the second to last option under hardware.
6. Look for iPhone in the USB device tree.

Why this works:

In order to diagnose the real reason why your iPhone won’t connect to iTunes on a Mac, we need to make sure that your Mac is actually recognizing your iPhone is there when you plug it into a USB port.