Troubleshooting

If something isn't working, find the symptom below.

Peak looks in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/. If that folder is empty or doesn't exist, you don't have a Finder backup of any iPhone on this Mac yet.

Fix:

Plug the iPhone in
Open Finder → click the iPhone in the sidebar
Choose "Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac"
Click Back Up Now
Wait until you see "Last backup to this Mac: just now"
Click the refresh button in Peak's sidebar (or restart Peak)

Backup list never appears after choosing a folder

Peak only sees the folder you selected — see Choosing your backup folder. Common mistakes:

You selected a folder that doesn't contain a backup. Choose ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ (the Backup folder), or a specific device's folder inside it.
The backup hasn't finished — confirm Finder shows "Last backup to this Mac: just now," then click the refresh button in Peak's sidebar.

"This backup is encrypted" — Peak asks for a password

This is normal if your Finder has "Encrypt local backup" turned on. See Working with Encrypted Backups.

If you don't know the password, that page walks through your options (Keychain recovery, switching to unencrypted, or resetting on the phone).

Scan starts but then fails with "sms.db not found"

Two possible causes:

The backup is incomplete. Finder may have started writing the backup but not finished. Look in Finder at the phone's row — does it say "Last backup: just now" or "Backing up…"? Wait until it's done, then try again.

The backup is corrupted. This happens occasionally if Finder was interrupted. Delete the partial backup folder (the one with the long UDID name in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/) and start a fresh backup in Finder.

A scan finishes but the report is empty

If "No content flagged" but you know there's stuff in there:

Check Settings → Categories — make sure the categories you care about are on
Try widening with terms you know are in there: in Settings → Categories (see Tuning the Wordlist), add a few test terms to a category and re-scan to verify the scanner sees text from the messages

If the forensic PDF is empty (no bubbles): the thread really has no readable text. This happens with attachment-only threads (all photos/videos, no text), or with very old iOS versions where text was stored differently. Open the PDF and look at the last page — the Forensic Manifest lists the message count, which should tell you whether messages were found at all.

Long thread takes forever / Peak appears stuck

Some threads are huge. The "Land Ain't Free" group chat in our test set has 14,000+ messages and takes about a minute to render. Peak streams progress events but the UI may not update granularly for the longest phase (PDF rendering).

Signal that it's still working: open Activity Monitor → look for the Peak process. If it's using CPU, it's making progress. If it's idle for more than 30 seconds, something's stuck — quit and try again.

For huge threads, consider:

Scanning only — skip the forensic PDF rendering, just get the content flags. (Future setting; for now, see Settings → General.)
Splitting the workload by running scans one at a time rather than batch-scanning everything.

Video plays as "preview unavailable" in the PDF

Peak uses macOS's QuickLook framework to generate the poster frame for videos. If the video file format can't be previewed by QuickLook on your macOS version, you'll see a placeholder bubble instead of the poster. The actual .mov file is still embedded in the PDF — open the PDF's attachments panel to extract and play.

If you see this for normal .mov files, restart Peak (QuickLook sometimes wedges). If it persists, the video may be in a format QuickLook doesn't support on your macOS version.

The Jump-to-Message link doesn't go anywhere

Most likely you're using Preview.app, which doesn't fully support cross-document PDF named destinations. Workarounds:

Look at the entry header — it shows page N. Open the forensic PDF and ⌘G → enter the page number.
Install Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (free). Acrobat supports the named destinations correctly.

My iPhone backup is way older than I expected

Finder won't always overwrite the same backup — sometimes it makes a brand-new folder if it thinks the previous one is stale. Look in the sidebar for multiple backup rows. The most recent one is at the top.

If you want to delete old backups: in Finder, with the iPhone selected, click Manage Backups… under the Backups section. You'll see a list with sizes and dates. Right-click a row to delete.

The app crashes / quits unexpectedly

Crash logs go to ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/. Look for filenames starting with Peak. The most recent one will have the crash details.

For now (v1), there's no built-in crash reporter. If you hit a reproducible crash, the details worth keeping on hand are:

Your macOS version (Apple menu → About This Mac)
Peak version (Peak → About Peak)
The thread or backup that triggered it (don't include personal content — just say "thread with about N messages and Y images")
The crash log file

Updating Peak

Peak updates through the Mac App Store. If you're not on the latest version:

Open the App Store app → click your name (bottom-left) → look under Updates, or search for Peak
Click Update next to Peak

Turn on automatic updates in System Settings → App Store to get them without thinking about it.

I'm still stuck

Peak doesn't have a customer support channel — it's a one-time purchase maintained by one person. If the steps above don't help, re-read the help doc most relevant to what you're doing; the docs cover everything Peak can do.

The product is built by one person; expect a slow turnaround on issues. Mission-critical use cases should not depend on Peak alone — keep your own copies of important backups and consider commercial alternatives if you need guaranteed support.

Next: Privacy & Security FAQ.