Apple's iCloud Private Relay was down for five hours for some

Apple on Wednesday reported a backend system issue that could prevent some users from accessing iCloud Private Relay, a new internet privacy feature included in the company's latest operating systems.

According to Apple's system status webpage, iCloud Private Relay went down at 11:40 a.m. Pacific due to an undisclosed issue. Users impacted by the ongoing outage may not be able to access the service, the company says.

Announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, iCloud Private Relay is designed to prevent third-party tracking of IP addresses, user location and other details by routing internet requests through two separate relays operated by two different entities. Internet connections configured to pass through the protocol use anonymous IP addresses that map to a user's region but do not reveal their exact location or identity, according to Apple.

The feature is designed to obscure online browsing habits from internet service providers, ad servers and other entities looking to create profiles based on gathered user information. Apple claims even it cannot connect the dots between users and the visited websites.

Currently considered a public beta feature, iCloud Private Relay launched with iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey in September as an iCloud+ subscription perk. The feature is not accessible in certain regions where local regulations prohibit internet privacy tools, the most notable being China.

It is unclear what caused the problem or how many users are affected, and Apple has not provided an estimate as to when the service will regain functionality.

Update: Apple reports the issue was resolved at 7:14 p.m. Pacific.

5 Comments

beowulfschmidt 2345 comments · 12 Years

About 3 years ago

Just out of curiosity, if one is using this service, does an outage like this mean that one cannot connect at all, or does it fall back to "unsecured"?

One of the features of my VPN is a "kill switch". If the VPN goes down for any reason, my internet connection is gone until I start the VPN again. I've only had an unexplained disconnection happen once.

BuffyzDead 358 comments · 17 Years

In my case, with Private Relay (Beta) check ON, under my Apple ID settings,

Mail would not load graphics in an email

and Safari would return, Page can not load due to No Server found.

The fix:

While leaving this alone (Private Relay (Beta) check ON, under my Apple ID settings,)

I went into System Preferences/ Network,

and checked OFF

Use iCloud Private Relay

Under Both, my Ethernet And Wi-Fi connected, settings.

Safari and Mail resumed working normally

retrogusto 1137 comments · 16 Years

I got a notification saying that the service was temporarily unavailable, but I didn’t otherwise notice any interruptions.

williamlondon 1423 comments · 14 Years

retrogusto said:

I got a notification saying that the service was temporarily unavailable, but I didn’t otherwise notice any interruptions.

Yep, same here, except not long after I got the message that all was back on and everything was fine, even before the first post in this thread appeared everything was back on.

sdbigguy 1 comment · 3 Years

Could this also be a reason that I can’t set up an iCloud alias email account all dat today? I just get the following message window…
“ Cannot save alias.

This alias cannot be saved at this time. Try again later.”

Share Your Thoughts on our Forums ->