Major Apple iCloud issues September 29th, 2020

Updated November 1st, 2022.

If you’re having trouble signing into your iCloud account… or getting your Mac.com mail… or buying things from the iTunes Store… or getting your calendars to sync… or using Find My iPhone… it’s probably because Apple is having a really bad day with its various online systems.

Here’s how it looks over here tonight:

Maybe your Mac can’t connect to iCloud either.

If so, this is probably not your problem to fix, so don’t go through changing your iCloud password, or doing anything else. Just wait it out.

If you have a “Mac.com” email address and can’t get mail using the Mail app on your Mac you may be able to get it by going to iCloud.com in Safari and signing in there. Worth a try.

Here’s a look at Apple’s System Status web page (screenshot as of 9:01 PM September 29th, 2020):

Usually all we see are green dots. Today, we see all sorts of problems. If you go to that web page now, maybe the problems are gone… but as of tonight, there’s an awful lot of trouble. I can’t recall seeing so many iCloud issues at once ever before.

So… if you’re having trouble with your iCloud account, don’t worry, it’s probably not your fault, and Apple will eventually fix it.

(Apple’s System Status page is a great page to know about. I have a link to it in the sidebar of every blog post on my site.)

If you try to sign into your iCloud account, and iCloud is down, you’ll get an error. They’ll say “Can’t authenticate.” So you’ll try and try, and then maybe say “I forgot” and go through the steps of changing your password. And then… you still won’t be able to sign in, because the problem is at Apple’s end! Don’t go down that path. Keep checking Apple’s System Status page. They’ll fix things soon enough. They always do.

Note: if the problem you’re having with one of Apple’s systems is not showing on Apple’s System Status page, you can contact them and let them know about it.

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