Apple’s iCloud service briefly went down late Friday night, leaving a portion of iPhone and Mac owners unable to log in or access their stored files. The disruption started just before midnight Eastern time and stretched into the early morning hours, finally returning to normal around 2:45 a.m.
According to Apple’s System Status page, the problem affected both account sign-ins and the iCloud web interface. The company confirmed the issue had been fixed but gave little detail, noting only that “some users were affected.” It remains unclear whether the downtime was widespread or limited to specific regions.
Users who ran into trouble took to social media to vent their frustration, posting screenshots of error messages like “Verification Failed” and “An unknown error occurred.” Reports on outage-tracking platforms spiked into the hundreds, though the numbers suggest the problem impacted a relatively small slice of Apple’s massive user base. The late-night timing may have also reduced the overall impact, sparing many from noticing the glitch.
This isn’t the first time Apple’s cloud-based services have stumbled this year. In June, a separate outage temporarily knocked out Apple Intelligence features, including Siri, for several hours. While such incidents are rare, they underscore how dependent users have become on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for syncing documents, photos, and app data.
Apple has not disclosed what caused Friday night’s interruption or whether steps are being taken to prevent future outages. For now, iCloud is back online and functioning normally, but the event serves as a reminder that even Apple’s ecosystem is not immune to unexpected downtime.