I was travelling recently and for a brief moment I thought I’d been hacked when my iPhone began repeatedly requesting my iCloud/Apple ID password. I had not been hacked, but had become victim of some weird and repetitive Apple ID bug.
Here are four steps which should squish that bug:
Symptom
Your iPhone is continuously requesting your login details and password. You enter these and the device requests them again and again. It’s annoying. Here’s what to do:
Before you begin
Check iCloud is working correctly. Visit the iCloud system status page and check all available services are marked with a green icon, take particular note of Apple ID, iCloud Account & Sign In, iMessage, iTunes. If there are service problems then you may want to wait for Apple to fix them, in case that resolves your problem.
Reset device
The first approach is to switch your iOS device off and switch it on again.
- Hold down the Sleep/Wake button until the Slide to Power Off dialog appears.
- Slide your device to off and wait for 30-seconds.
- Press Sleep/Wake to switch the device on once again
- You’ll be asked for your Apple ID on start up, but hopefully just once.
Reset iCloud
If your device continues to ask for Apple ID then it may help to sign out of iCloud and then sign in once again. (Be warned this will also disable Apple Pay and remove Photo Stream photos and iCloud Drive data from the device).
- Navigate to Settings>iCloud and tap “Sign Out” and then “Delete from [Device]”.
- Now you should disable Find My iPhone (Settings>iCloud>Find My iPhone toggle to off).
- Once you are out of iCloud you should reset your iPhone (see above) and then return to Settings>iCloud, tap “Sign In” and enter your Apple ID and Password.
Reset Password
How many devices, Macs and services are you running using your Apple ID? Resetting your Apple ID password will require that you manually reenter it into every device and most of the services you use on every Apple product – that’s why I hope your problem resolves in the earlier steps. If not then you should visit appleid.apple.com, choose ‘Reset your password’ and follow the instructions to reset the password on your account.
You will need to enter your password on all your devices once again, but you should only need to do so once and the initial problem should now be resolved. You will also find iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud, iTunes and other password-protected services will demand the password, but once you’ve got all these services active again the problem will hopefully stop.
Restore device
In the event the problem persists there is one more thing you can do, but you need a Mac or PC running iTunes to do it as you can’t do this using iCloud.
- First you must connect your device to the computer, launch iTunes and backup your device to the computer.
- Once the backup is complete (it can take some time) then, leaving your iPhone connected to the Mac you should switch Find My iPhone off in Settings>iCloud.
- Once you’ve switched Find My iPhone off you must return to iTunes on the computer and select Restore iPhone or Restore iPad. When restoring the device use the Backup you just created and when the process completes the device should no longer make constant requests for your Apple ID.
- (You will need to reauthorize Apple Pay, re-enter WiFi and network passwords and passwords for some Web services once this process is complete).
Hopefully taking these steps will have resolved your problem.
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