New MacBook Air is not showing option to allow iphone notifications

Same exact issue here as well. Of note, widgets from iPhone are broken too in addition to this.

Was on M3 Air and migrated via Thunderbolt to a M2 Max Macbook.

Summary:

M3 Air, original login:

Mirroring - Works

Handoff - Works

iPhone Notification Mirroring - Works

iPhone widgets on Mac - Works

Migrated Max from M3 -> Thunderbolt connection on my migrated login:

Mirroring - Works just fine

Handoff - the little app icons show up for handoff work just fine

iPhone Notification Mirroring - does not work.

iPhone widgets on Mac - does not work

Of note on the migrated Max - I created a new account, logged into my iCloud and all the functionality is now working.

Mirroring, Handoff, Notifications, Widgets. All good - on the migrated mac. But it's not the account I want to be on, I have a ton of preferences/settings/logins that would be a nightmare to move over, and I don't want to deal with the potential pitfalls of unix UID 502 vs 501

I have created a support ticket with zero traction. I have gone through multiple hard drive wipes -> migrations at this point. Done every combination of logging on/off my iCloud account in combination of wiping the connection for phone mirroring/handoff/and all that. I'm sad. I miss my notifications.

I can confirm my App Store is logged in as me as well. I've tried to nuke some settings to no avail. Went to latest dev beta and back to no luck either. I'm at a loss and am sad about it

I updated to macOS 15.5 RC in hopes that they might finally have snuck in a fix, but sadly, nope. Same thing, setting is there if you search for "iPhone" but it seems to do nothing and doesn't stay on once you close settings. Apple has gotten way too sloppy lately..

I thought I'd add to the crowd. I recently restored my MacBook Pro (16-inch, Nov 2024) from my Time Machine backup (macOS 15.5) after I deeply regretted installing Tahoe. Pretty silly of me, in hindsight, but I was very excited by the WWDC Keynote!

Back in 15.5, everything has been working fine except for iPhone notifications, exactly as described by everyone else here. I can even search for it in System Settings and toggle it, as others have noted, but it disappears after closing the app. I've tried restarting my devices and re-pairing them multiple times to no avail.

I really appreciate this feature, so it's very frustrating that it's broken after restoring from backup! My Mac is very meticulously configured to my liking, which is exactly why I love Time Machine. I'd really rather not have to set up from scratch just to get this one feature working again.

I'm also having this issue. Got a new M4 MBP, everything was working as it should while I was using it for a couple days - iPhone notifications coming through. As soon as I managed to get my old laptop backed up and transferred across using migration assistant (like pretty much everyone else in here), it's completely stopped working.

It's really annoying to see apple still hasn't figured out a solution for this yet.

Good work!🦄👍🏼

I'll also add that I transferred all of my data from the M1 Max 14" to the new M4 Air 15" using a thunderbolt cable instead of setting up as a new mac. Had too many items I wasn't interested in trying to reinstall after set up so I opted to transfer. Not sure if there was a line of code that got all wonky during the transfer or not, but I thought I'd add this to the thread.

I also have the same issue with my new MacBook Air M4. It connects to my iPhone 12 Mini via iPhone Mirroring, but I can only enable "Notifications from iPhone" when I search in the Mac settings. And when I close the settings, it disables itself.

Today I updated macOS to 15.4.1 and iOS to 18.4.1, but the problem still persists. However, this time I'm able to see a list of iPhone apps that I can mirror notifications from. I didn't see this list before.

This bug was incredibly frustrating. Based on the comments in this thread, it appears to be related to the migration assistant. Even creating a new user account didn’t resolve the issue for me.

To fix it, I backed up my data using an external SSD, erased all data, and reset my Mac to factory settings. Then, I reinstalled it without using migration assistant, as if it were a new device. This approach worked, and the bug was resolved.

Later, I transferred my files back to my Mac from my external SSD without using migration assistant.

The downside is that I had to reconfigure all my settings and preferences from scratch. However, it took me less time than I had anticipated.

I’m glad I took the time to do this. I missed receiving notifications from my iPhone, especially Duo Mobile login approval requests.

Do we know for sure that this is affected by both Time Machine restores and Migration Assistant? I believe I used the migration assistant that popped up to migrate from my MacBook Air to my mac Mini. I'm just wondering if anyone has tried a full restore from a Time Machine backup and has the same issue?

Hello,

If your devices could get notifications before an OS or iOS update, log in to your iCloud web page at https://www.icloud.com. Restart your iPhone and Mac, and everything should work like before. I do this routinely every time there’s an operating system update on either of my devices. I don’t see the reason for changing any previous settings (you could ensure everything is set as before the notifications outage). Apple does some machine login acknowledgment via browser with iCloud, and everything will work as expected. 

Cheers.

It gets even worse.. the new live activity feature in the new OS is also tied to this and therefore is also broken, so that won't work, either. Man, this is just awful because I'd have probably 100 hours of reconfiguring if I was to wipe but I was really looking forward to that feature, as well! :(

me too having this problem, spent a lot of hours and nothing's seems work. i migrate from M2 MBA to M4 MBP. that's very sad for a nearly 2000 bucks price tag device and we of course intend to use it for a long period of time.

is Apple going to ghost us on this issue?

I finally caved end of last week. Used chatGPT to help me know how to backup things I was most worried about restoring on a fresh setup without using Time Machine backups. I spent 6 hours one evening and then several other hours off and on the next couple days but I am all up and running with everything I cared about and the good news is the iPhone notifications are working again, what a relief! Was it worth it? I guess, as I sadly really love that feature and also wanted the upcoming live activities that also rely on it. Should we have had to go through this to get it resolved? no way! Shame on Apple for not addressing this with the growing number of folks affected, but it sure seemed clear this could sit another year untouched and I was frustrated all the time not being able to use it.. Thanks to the others in here who did the same and motivated me to go for it.. Good luck to the rest of you..