“Account recovery method needed” notification when already set up

I managed to resolve the problem for me. By signing out your iCloud account and back in you can apparently force your device to check for the existence of a recovery method and for me it works fine now. I could even turn Advanced Data Protection back on and no problems so far.

If the problem occurs on a Mac like it has in my case, it not possible to sign out the AppleID directly as the respective menu entry does not show (see screenshot in my previous post). I managed to work around that following these steps:

1. Open Preferences
2. Click on Internet Accounts
3. Select your iCloud Account
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Delete Account (This will not delete your iCloud account, only remove it from your Mac.)
5. Follow the steps to deactivate iCloud features
6. When finished, iCloud should no longer appear in the Internet Accounts screen and the prompt to setup a Recovery Method should have disappeared
7. Restart your Mac
8. Open Preferences
9. You should now see the AppleID menu entry in the top
10. Click on AppleID
11. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Sign Out
12. Restart your Mac
13. Open Preferences and Sign in with your AppleID

This resolved the issue on a Mac for me. Hope it might help others as well.

I have the same issue on my MacBook.

In order to use Advanced Data Protection I setup a Recovery Key using my iPhone a few days ago. Now my MacBook is prompting me to setup a recovery method with a notification and a hint in the system preferences (see screenshot), although the iPhone and other Apple devices display that a Recovery Key has been setup.

Clicking on either of the buttons does not show any reaction. The problem is, that as long as the hint is displayed, I can no longer access the iCloud configuration on this Mac as the respective side menu entry does not show up.

I already tried several methods to troubleshoot the problem:

• Several reboots of the MacBook
• Setup of a new Recovery Key via iPhone
• Deauthorizing the MacBook from another device (This adds two additional hints to this page saying the Mac cannot access the iCloud account)
• Reauthorizing the MacBook by entering the password
• Turning off Advanced Data Protection via iPhone

None of the above solutions resolves the problem, the MacBook still prompts for a new recovery method which cannot be set using either of the buttons and the iCloud configuration page in the system preferences remains inaccessible.

Same here, with few differences though:

• I can't sign out of iCloud :) I can "Delete it", confirm I want a local backup, confirm Wallet will be empty and... nothing else happens.
• I had duplicated recovery contacts visible on iOS and on macOS. I removed some, but no change
• Managing Recovery key on mac usually results in this (but not always)

By now I am totally puzzled which recovery key is at work. The one set up on iPhone, the one I could recently set up on mac? No idea. I think I'm going to turn off Advanced Protection

I'm not sure if it's related to the latest update to iOS 16.3.1, but my iPhone it's not asking anymore to set up a Recover Code.

In my case, I created the Recover Code on my Macbook and then it kept asking to create one too in my iPhone until my lastest iOS update. The issue is gone.

Hi ibebrichau,

We want to get you some assistance with that issue. Please contact Apple Support for help. You may be able to reach Apple Support here: Contact Apple Support

Thanks!

Hi ibebrichau,

Did you get a response from Apple Support? I'm in the same boat, have a Recovery Key setup in my Mac and iOS is asking for one too.