What I found is that the backups were set to: “Back up your most important data on your iPhone to iCloud, even though I wasn’t backing up in that manner. Open iPhone backup settings by clicking on the device in your finder window or by opening the Music App (formerly iTunes App) Apple photos app prompts 'please unlock iphone' even though phone is unlocked already 4 Solution to fix Apple Photos False Unlock Message Disconnect phone from my iMac completely.After checking my home screen several times, I verified that my iPhone was unlocked already! Things I tried to fix Apple Photos from prompting the false “please unlock iPhone” message with no avail Today I was trying to import my photos into the Apple Photos app on my iMac only to be stuck in a loop where it asked me to, “Please Unlock iPhone”.