Most Common iCloud Problems and How to Fix Them

Fast forward to today, and yet while the service has fixed some of the core problems that made iCloud implementation a nightmare – despite an increased demand from customers – we are still seeing issues. Luckily there are ways of fixing the most common ones…

Mac can’t connect to iCloud and “Unknown error occurred”

Sometimes you may see an error message reading, “This Mac can’t connect to iCloud because of a problem with [[email protected]]” leading to iCloud preferences. While some users are able to log in to iCloud on a Mac without any issues, others have encountered another similar error message stating “An unknown error occurred”, or even the endlessly spinning beach ball. This signals that the computer is likely stuck in an infinite loop of iCloud login failures, and as a result is preventing functionality and all iCloud-related apps from working.

Fix: It should go without saying that the first thing to do in this kind of situation is to check Apple’s system-status page and, more specifically, whether iCloud is down or not. If the service is down, you should wait until it is back up and running to see if the problem persists. If it does remain, follow the steps mentioned below:

Can’t sign in to iCloud due to an authentication request

This usually happens when you are trying to log into the Mac as a standard user, which then leaves that user without administrator privileges. In this case you will get an authentication alert saying, “System Preferences is trying to modify the Directory Services configuration”.

Fix: If you know the administrator’s name and password, simply enter them in when prompted. Otherwise, you can always log in as an administrator on OS X Lion 10.7.5 or later by clicking on the Apple menu and selecting “Log Out [username]” and typing in the admin username and password into the right fields of the login screen.

Account not verified – check your email

If you get the “Account not verified – check your email for instructions for verifying your account” message while trying to sign into iCloud, follow these steps.

iCloud drive files stuck uploading

If you are using an older Mac (OS X El Capitan 10.11 or earlier) in addition to another Mac that is using the latest operating system, the likeliness of running into synchronization problems is pretty high.

Fix: Allocate time (probably hours!) for a phone call with Apple support. Apparently, in some cases it is a software issue, so an Apple agent can advise you on which apps to eventually remove. For other users, disabling and re-enabling iCloud has worked, but as a warning this will erase all files in the iCloud Drive folder. But this requires a backup, especially for those documents stuck in the syncing process.

Sync problems are potentially caused by large files that are slow to upload to iCloud. You can always use a Mac optimization app to remove large files after backing them up with Time Machine to both save space and re-energize that stuck iCloud sync.

Still, there is quite some work that Apple has left to do on the syncing side of its iCloud service.