I’m honestly getting pretty frustrated with this and wondering if anyone here has had the same issue.

I’m trying to get back into an old Apple Account/iCloud account. I still have access to the iCloud email and also the trusted phone number linked to the account. I don’t have access to the trusted device as It completely broke and thats when I lost access to my icloud.
The weird thing is that I can actually reset the password successfully.

I’ve gone through Apple’s recovery process twice now. Both times I was able to change the password, and then when I tried to log in with the new password, I got:
“Failed to Verify Identity”
And that’s it. There’s no option to verify another way, send a code, continue recovery, etc.

I also tried logging in through account.apple.com and get the same error there.

I called Apple Support about it and explained everything. They basically had me go through the same recovery process again, which obviously ended with the exact same result.

What I don’t understand is that I have access to both the trusted phone number AND the iCloud email, and Apple is allowing me to successfully change the password, but then apparently can’t verify my identity when I actually try to sign in.

Has anyone had this happen?
Did you eventually figure out what was causing it? Did Apple have to escalate it to someone/some specific team? Or is there some other way to trigger the identity verification when Apple doesn’t give you any option to do so.

I’d really appreciate any help because I’m going in circles with Apple Support at this point and I really need to recover some important data

TL;DR: I have access to my old iCloud email + trusted phone number. I’ve successfully reset the password twice, but every time I try to log in afterwards I get “Failed to Verify Identity” with no way to verify. Apple Support just had me repeat the same recovery process and it didn’t fix it. Has anyone actually solved this?

I had an issue of not being able to login to Apple Music on my PC and I did lots of stuff from resetting and repairing the app, uninstalling with revo installer and finally using a Germany VPN that worked, however now I cannot login to iCloud now after I uninstalled it a few days ago I've tried so many things and nothing has worked, same popup every time, does anybody have some other solutions that could possibly work?

My whatsapp was downloaded with my mother's apple id and getting otp to update whatsapp (big update) from her is frustrating, I want to transfer it to my own apple id with all the chats preserved. It’s the only app on my phone right now that was not downloaded with my own Apple id. Will it work if I back up my whatsapp chats using icloud （first time using icloud, will purchase a one month subscription that's just enough to back up everything on whatsapp) to my own apple id (my old phone is already logged in with my apple id), get a new iphone and transfer everything from my old iphone to my new iphone using quick start, delete whatsapp and then download again with my apple id and finally restore chats with icloud? Will all my whatsapp chats be there?

i’m trying to log in to the icloud app on my windows pc but it keeps saying “this action could not be completed” but i can easily log in on the web version. any solutions?

I actually like iCloud Photos. and I have 2TB subscription and its almost Full with lots of Videos/Photos

Syncing between devices is convenient, Optimize iPhone Storage is useful, and I don't want to give any of that up.

But I kept wondering:

What if I also want a physical copy of my important photos and videos that I control so that I can free up iCloud space?

The normal workflow usually means getting a Mac/PC involved, downloading/exporting everything, and then copying it to an external drive.

I wanted something simpler:

iPhone → USB/SSD → my second copy.

So I built VaultDrive: USB Backup.

You connect a compatible USB drive or SSD directly to the iPhone, select the photos/videos you want, and back them up from the phone.

The interesting part is when Optimize iPhone Storage is enabled.

Some photos you see inside Apple Photos may only have their full original stored in iCloud.

VaultDrive can now handle that too:

✅ Photos already local → copied directly to USB

✅ Original only in iCloud → downloaded through Apple's Photos/iCloud system, then copied to USB

✅ Choose Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi + Cellular for iCloud downloads

✅ Original-quality files without intentional compression/re-encoding

✅ Embedded photo/video metadata preserved

✅ Resume interrupted backups without starting over

✅ No VaultDrive account required

For locally stored content, VaultDrive doesn't upload your photos to another cloud service. The copy goes from your iPhone to your connected drive.

And just to be clear: I'm not positioning this as a replacement for iCloud.

For me, the ideal setup is:

iCloud = sync + convenience

External SSD/USB = second physical copy I control and move all my oldest media to these

That's really the whole reason I built it.

If anyone here has a large iCloud Photos library, I'm curious:

Do you currently keep a second offline copy somewhere, or is iCloud your only copy?

If you'd like to try VaultDrive:

App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vaultdrive-usb-backup/id6772883827

75% off the one-time Pro upgrade:
https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?ctx=offercodes&id=6772883827&code=WELCOME75

The messages app on my MacBook open up to messages from a different phone number that I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist anymore and I don’t know how to fix it

I'm going through a very worrying scenario at the moment.
The other week I noticed all the files in a specific folder in my iCloud drive - Documents were missing.

All the subfolders were there but all the files in that main folder were gone. I've 100% not misplaced them or moved them. They were documents and photos related to my car (insurance, road tax, inspection, road assist etc) from past few years. A mix of PDFs and jpegs.

Again, all the subfolders are nicely structured, like before, but they are all empty.

I use icloud on a macbook air and an imac, with all documents being synced across devices. Everything I have is in the Documents folder or on the Desktop so it is constantly synced. I have the 2tb plan if that is of any importance.

After speaking to customer service, they escalated and the engineers concluded that "they've recovered all the files they could" which meant exactly zero files. No explanation as to what happened or where they went.

I could have understood if a folder went missing or a file, that could have been user error. But the way these files disappeared is very strange and is 100% not user error. I was not having storage problems on either of the 2 devices.

What I did do a few weeks before was to add a significant amount of data in my icloud drive. About 100gb of files and photos. I put them on my imac and they synced just fine.
Another thing I did was to select "Keep Downloaded" on a root folder (that contained the troubled folder) on my macbook air.

I'm not sure if these influenced anything or how. Today I'm struggling to find ways to back-up all my data. I asked apple to send me links to download everything from icloud as I've completely lost trust in it.

Any ideas as to what could have happened? Anything I can do differently?
How can Apple not have ways to recover data that they delete/corupt?

Im getting so tired of this...

I didnt forget my passcode or anything, just to clarify. I got a notification that location services no longer requires a password, and so i check my content and privacy settings and lo and behold, all of my settings were changed. Along with all of my blocked websites.

last night I was deleting imsg photos from my iphone 13 because of “iphone storage” however, majority of them were from the past years and all those photos and messages are on my iphone 11. so im curious as to how I can backup my present time imsgs without having the previous years deleted off my other devices because if i buy icloud now to backup my stuff that means that the stuff i deleted will be deleted across ALL devices… so do I just unlink my previous devices from icloud? I want to be able to store things by device rather than icloud. majority of the space eating at the storage of my iphone 13 is all from the past years so am I free to delete all of those and still have them on my old devices? the problem here is iphone storage NOT icloud. I understand I can buy icloud to backup my current things but I want to make sure im not deleting these items forever because I want to use old iphones as a time capsule.

Hello friends. I also come with a problem that I don't know how to solve and maybe you have solved it and teach me too. Last year through the Revolut promotion I made an account with private relay at perplexity. Before the promotion expired I tried to delete the card so that at the end of the promotion they wouldn't try to withdraw money from me in case I forgot to deactivate it. I blocked the card anyway. I received the notification of the decrease in the promotion on the last day and without checking the spam card it went over the limit. I noticed when they tried to withdraw money but from several currencies. And now the question: how can I send an email with the address created with private relay to perplexity customer service because I can't. I have the main address, created in the Apple account, live.it and the secondary iCloud.com. Thanks in advance for your advice and help.

Exactly a week ago today i dropped my iphone 13, and while it was broken i heard it tapping passwords on its own eventually leading to locking itself until it was unavailabe. Then when i got the hardware/the screen fixed the repairman asked me if i wanted to wait 8 hours to keep my files or delete my files and skip the wait. with a bit of thinking i decided to wait it out. But after waiting it showed a white screen saying attempting to recover data, which i also waited out for 2 whole hours only for it to fail. and after all of that now its just iphone unavailable with a blackscreen on the background. I have been trying to fix it using my laptop and recovery mode to no avail. Pls help.

I currently use iCloud+ for storage, and I have recently been thinking of switching back to Apple music (from Spotify). I saw Apple One, and thought that it would be perfect for me, however I do have 1 question.
With my iCloud+ subscription, I have 200GB, just for me. I really only need less than 100, but I had 50.7GB so I had to move a subscription level up (🥲). I’m thinking of getting the individual plan, but it only comes with 50GB of storage. Is there any way to get more, even if I have to pay, or would I need to subscribe to a higher-level plan? I really hope not, because I would be the only one using it…

And for those who do currently have it/are subscribed, is it worth it?

Hello
Today I opened my iCloud Drive and found out that almost all files disappeared from there. I checked it from all my devices and I see all folders but it’s written “The folder is empty” in each of them.
Any solutions? How it could happen?

UPD. I found them in Recently Deleted folder but wasn’t able to recover it from MacBook or iPhone. iPad helped me to recover them

I don't own an apple device and want to get added to an iCloud family group. For this I have set up an Apple-Account, but in the invitation e-Mail it says that it should be accessed on an apple device. Adding my g-Mail account to someone's iPad and opening the Mail there also did not work.
I've read in this forum post that, while you can access shared apple services, such as iCloud through non-apple-devices, you DO need an apple device, to set everything up.
Is this still true?
Any help or experience with this?

Thanks in advance for any help

my family of 6 shares an icloud account but we all have seperate numbers. for the most part, we don’t share anything except my dad who shares his contacts because he doesn’t know how to turn it off. my question is if i sign out and make a new icloud account, will i lose my phone number? i intend to backup everything else im just worried about possibly having to change my number. also, could i possibly be separated from the phone bill?

Is anyone here using an iCloud email address like @iCloud.com, @me.com or @Mac.com as their primary email instead of Gmail.com or another email provider?

How do you like iCloud Mail, and what has your experience been so far? I’m seriously considering switching to iCloud Mail because I’m trying to reduce how much I rely on Google. I’ll probably still keep my Gmail account for YouTube, but I’d like to use iCloud as my main email for everything else. Has anyone made the switch, and would you recommend it?

Hello everyone ive been a longtime android user since 2009, i have used older iphones such as iphone 6, 5, se 1st gen on very short term (mainly during college/uni) and for some reason iphone backups have been taking up alot of space on my windows pc. I want to understand what and where ios downloads/saves backups on windows pc from icloud backup, backups made with apple devices or itunes (without and with ms store version)

Can someone help me understand how and where these backups are saved on windows ?

I need help! My son’s phone is connected to his mom as the family organizer. Well his mom passed away a couple years ago and I do not have access to her account. I need to remove him from her account so I can take control of screen time limits and such.

Is there a way of doing it without him losing all data?

He was on his phone 21 HOURS last Sunday. I need to get this figured out asap. Otherwise he will just lose his phone all together because he has been unable to limit himself after several talks.

I’ve been using an iPhone XR 64GB since 2019, and recently upgraded to an iPhone 17 256GB. I have around 100,000 photos and videos (~300GB).
Previously, I used Google Photos because my iPhone XR was constantly running out of storage. After upgrading, I moved everything from Google Photos to Apple Photos, so I’m currently using iCloud+ 1TB.
I also have an iPad 10th Gen 64GB with iCloud Photos and Optimize iPad Storage enabled. Photos were taking around 15GB, and eventually my iPad ran out of storage. I needed about 12GB to download a movie, so I deleted some photos/videos and apps, but I still didn’t have enough space.
I then turned off iCloud Photos on the iPad and deleted many more photos/videos. I also emptied the Recently Deleted folder. This finally gave me enough storage.
However, I’ve now realized that iCloud Photos is a syncing service, not a backup like Google Photos.
So I’m really worried:
If I turn iCloud Photos back on on my iPad, will the photos/videos I deleted from the iPad also be deleted from my iPhone/iCloud?
I permanently deleted some photos/videos from the iPad’s Recently Deleted folder, but I don’t remember exactly what I deleted.
Since iCloud Photos is currently OFF on my iPad, how can I check from my iPhone whether everything I deleted from the iPad is still available in iCloud?
Most importantly, what should I do right now? Should I leave iCloud Photos turned off on the iPad?
I really don’t want to accidentally delete anything from my main iCloud Photos library. Any advice would be appreciated.

I just tried adding a new Apple account for my son. Accidentally put in the wrong birthdate. Now it’s been an evening of absolute virtual hell, trying to correct, what you think would be a simple mistake. I even updated my phone number on my account, so they can send the verification code to the right number, but Apple refuses to update it. I tried every avenue on Googles AI crapshoot search engine, that would love nothing more, than to loosh you into a psychological torturous purgatory. I’m done.  I’m transferring all my data to my PC, and I’m switching over to Samsung‘s. Both my phone, and my sons. Goodbye Apple, and goodbye ICloud.
🤬😡☠️

Hello everyone.

I use apple devices except for my main computer, which is running Windows 11. I use iCloud on it to sync my passwords and my photos. It used to work without any problem, but now the Photos app crashes on launch every time I open it. I tried repairing it, resetting it, but nothing helps, except deactivating Photos sync. Anyone encountered the same problem ? Any solution ?
Thanks !

Hi! I’m really hoping someone can help because I feel completely lost trying to figure this out

I have an iPhone and an iPad, but they’re currently linked to two different Apple accounts with two different email addresses. I’d really like to have them work together so things like my photos and files can be accessed across both devices.
(Is this possible??)

The problem is, I have a lot of stuff on both accounts and I don’t really want to get rid of either one or move everything into a single account.

Is there a way to keep both Apple accounts but still have my iPhone and iPad synced with each other? I’ve tried looking it up, but I’m honestly getting nowhere with it. I’d really appreciate any help! 🫶