There appears to be an increasingly widespread Apple ID outage of some sort impacting users tonight, 9to5Mac reported. A number of people on social media say they were logged out of their Apple ID across multiple devices on Friday evening and forced to reset their password before logging back in.
We received our first tip about this around 8 p.m. ET. In the hours since then, the problem has gained significant traction on social media.
Apple’s System Status website doesn’t indicate that any of its services are having issues this evening. Still, it’s clear that social media reports that something wonky is going on behind the scenes at Apple. A few of us at 9to5Mac have also been directly affected by the problem.
People are being signed out of their Apple ID across all of their devices. If you try to sign in with your original Apple ID password, you’ll be locked out of your account. You’ll then be forced to reset your password before being able to sign back in. There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason as to why this is happening.
The Verge reported that overnight, many people reported on social media that they were inexplicably logged out of their Apple IDs and then require to reset their passwords when they tried to sign in again, and nobody seems to know why. Some reported needed to enter their iPhone passcode to connect to iCloud again, while others with Stolen Device Protection enabled said they had to wait an hour before being able to log in.
According to The Verge, Apple’s System Status webpage shows no current issues with any of its services, so it’s not clear if this was a widespread issue. That said, 9to5Mac reports that even a few of its staff members were also affected by the issue.
At least one Forbes contributor apparently experienced the issue as well. The outlet saw no indication that this was related to the password reset attacks that several publications, including Forbes, covered in March.
Engadget reported something is up with Apple ID this weekend. As reported by 9to5Mac, Apple users started complaining online last night that they’d been logged out of their Apple ID’s on all of their devices without explanation.
Upon trying to log back in, some say they were locked out of their accounts despite entering the correct details, and had to reset their passwords. Engadget has reached out to Apple for more information.
According to Engadget, Apple hasn’t said anything publicly about what’s going on, and its System Status page makes no mention of problems with Apple ID or any other systems in the last 24 hours. In a Mastodon post spotted by The Verge, one person told them that “sometimes random security improvements are added to your account,”
It’s unclear how many users have been affected, though people have piled onto social media threads about the issue to say they’ve experienced it too. According to 9to5Mac, some of the publication’s own team have run into the problem.
In my opinion, something wonky was going on at Apple. There doesn’t appear to be any specific reason why some Apple users were affected by .. whatever this was.