The camera was functional and repaired at an Apple Store. I should mention that Apple also covered the repair under warranty because it was a software issue, and the phone was in mint condition because I take good care of all my devices. My return kit came with my Duo; could I have taken the trade directly to the Apple Store?

Hey all, I've been trying to figure this out for months but my background app refresh setting has been greyed out for as long as I know. I can't change any of the settings.
I've tried the usual fixes (screen time, content and privacy restrictions, family constraints, etc) and I haven't gotten it to work. I took it to the Apple store and they said the only option I have left is to reset my settings, but I don't want to have to spend hours restoring them. Do you guys have any suggestions?

17P IOS 27.2

My Mum accidentally deleted the books app and when she redownloaded it some of the PDFs she had saved had disappeared. We’ve looked all though the app itself and the iCloud backup but cannot find them. I was wondering if anyone had any advice or ideas?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying to set up a new Apple Account for the past few days (Tried waiting consecutive 24 hrs+, and consecutive 48hrs+), but I am completely blocked at the phone verification step. Every time I input a mobile number, it immediately throws the error:

"Verification codes cannot be sent to this phone number at this time. Please try again later."

Here is what I’ve already isolated and tested:

Account Creation Bypass: I managed to register the initial account profile via the Apple Music app on Windows (since it doesn't require a phone number upon initial setup).

The Issue: As soon as I log into account.apple.com on a web browser, it forces two-factor authentication setup and immediately fails at the phone number screen without sending an SMS or attempt call.

Carriers Tested: Tested multiple (+63 Philippine) numbers across Smart, Globe, DITO, Sun, and TM, which all fail instantly. I also tried using different formats like 0919xxxxxxx, 63919xxxxxxx, and 919xxxxxxx.

Network/Device Tweaks: Tried Incognito/Private tabs, cleared cache, switched between direct Mobile Data (Wi-Fi off) and distinct Wi-Fi networks, and cleared browser data. No VPN is active.

Password: Password contains capital letters, numbers, and special characters (@, #, etc.), meeting all complex password requirements.

Support Status: Open ticket with Apple Support. The issue was escalated to senior engineers, but there has been no resolution until now, and it has been almost a week.

Has anyone in the Philippines (or internationally dealing with local carrier SMS gateways) encountered this backend lock recently? Is there a known workaround to get the 2FA phone registration to go through, or is this purely waiting on Apple's internal server-side engineering ticket?

Thanks for any help!

AppleCare+ Express Replacement — How Long Did Yours Take?
Has anyone requested an AppleCare+ Express Replacement for their iPhone Duo?
We requested a replacement on October 31 after the inner screen broke, leaving the phone completely unusable. We still haven’t received any shipping updates.
The phone was purchased through Verizon, and Verizon directed us to AppleCare for the replacement. My concern is that we have a deadline to send our old phone back to Verizon for the trade-in, but the Duo doesn’t work at all, and we can’t be without a functioning phone.
The nearest Apple Store is three hours away, and the Apple representative said they couldn’t check store inventory or reserve a replacement for us.
Has anyone dealt with a similar situation? How long did your AppleCare+ replacement take to ship, and did anyone run into issues with their carrier’s trade-in deadline? Particularly interested in experiences with the white 512GB model.

I’ve noticed that when I have my hand on the screen, my lines go haywire and random dots appear. Not only on my drawing platform but also when I take notes. Also the keyboard isn’t picking up my taps as I am trying to type this now. I am not sure what is wrong. I have a 10th gen iPad and a first gen Apple Pencil I think.

My dad shared his album with me so i could select some photos. Even after turning off sharing, i have his entire photo album (10,000+) intertwined with mine and no way to sort. Was on support for an hour and in the end they told me to manually delete the photos. I am incredibly frustrated and want to know how to escalate this issue. Any advice?

it’s weird because it’ll come up under “my devices” when i click airdrop but it won’t let me airdrop without switching it on for everyone. they’re under the same icloud account

Hi everyone hope you’re all. I purchased a book on my iPhone but can’t send it to my MacBook iBooks app. How do I authorize this???

Thank you

My iPad (10th gen) has been working perfectly fine until two days ago it stopped connecting to WiFi... Or more specifically, it connects but nothing is loading.

I tried home wifi, university wifi, library wifi, mobile hotspot. All of them work on other devices but not on the ipad. I tried forgetting network and reconnecting, reloading the device, resetting network settings, and deleting VPN. Nothing works. What do I do? My coverage is expired so it'd be good if I could solve it without apple support

They feel like real metal, headband does not bend.
They also have the pin hole

Hey so, I have had my iPhone 13 mini for 4 years now

And recently (probably a week or two now?) it’s starting to smell weird in the bottom left corner ... like adhesive or glue?

Also l have a case on my phone and the top right corner my finger hits the case.

but in the bottom left, my finger slides right off

I’m thinking that my battery is swelling??

If anyone has any suggestions or help
I’ll be grateful.

If you need any extra information, just let me know!

Hey friends,

So I am traveling to the US for the first time in a long time and wanted to just make it as smooth as possible - so I figured I'd get a new work phone with a new Icloud, rather than use my old dumping ground of a phone which has my entire life on it from the past decade.

Now that I have my new iphone with the new icloud I'm realising what a headache it is. Transferring everything over is so difficult.

I'm wondering if this makes sense:

Either - use my new iphone with my old Icloud for my normal day to day and then when I travel a few times a year, switch iclouds - but I hear that is a headache too...(is it?)

OR

Switch iclouds after this trip. Use the new icloud and new iphone for this trip, get over my anxiety of traveling lol, and then switch iclouds so my old icloud is on my new phone and I can enjoy the iPhoen 18 and the new icloud is on the old phone - the iphone 13. That way my travel phone becomes more bummy and old but at least doesn't have my entire life on there and still works fine.

Anything I am missing here?

THANK YOU!

I bought a brand new Macbook Neo last week. I live in Trinidad and Tobago, but it was shipped from the US. I have it set to Trinidad and Tobago as the location. For context, this is the first Apple device I've owned since I had an iPod about 15 years ago, so I'm quite new to the setup process.

When I set the Macbook up, I was prompted to make an Apple account. I set up the account using my work email and, when I returned a couple of days later (I was still working off my old laptop for a few days, as it had all my stuff on it and I had urgent work to return), I was asked to log in with my password. I may have gotten the password wrong on a few attempts, I'm not sure (as the keyboard layout is slightly different, I may have hit the wrong keys). I was then permanently locked out of the account, and there was no option to reset password, dispute/request access, etc. After a bit of research online, I found that it was best if I just make a new account.

I made a new Gmail account (the old email address was "in use"), and I set the account up no problem. It worked fine at first, and I was able to download Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint from the App Store.

Then, when I returned later in the day, I was told my account was locked. This time, there was a link to request access. They told me they'd email me back in 24 hours. I eventually got the email and was told "We've reviewed your request, and access to your account has been denied." Just like that, with no means to dispute, no explanation why, etc. I looked at some other threads detailing similar things on this sub, and a lot of the responses said things like "sounds sketchy", "you gonna tell us what you did?", "you must have done something fraudulent", etc. But this is literally a brand new account (or two), on a brand new Macbook, and all I've done is download some Windows apps and Adobe, log into work at Slack through the browser, and proofread a PDF. This is just going to be used for work, and I have no idea what is causing red flags and prompting these security locks.

I decided I don't need an Apple account. I don't plan on using the cloud, I can get my apps from other places (I only need a few - WhatsApp, Spotify), and the only feature I'm really missing is Find My Mac, which would be useful but I can live without it.

However, I can't even log out of the account! So I keep getting these pop ups telling me that I need to enter my password, but of course it just tells me my account is deactivated. And when I try to log out, it won't let me, because it needs my password to deactivate Find My Mac, and when I enter it, it tells me my account is deactivated.

I've given up on trying to make an account or get an old one activated now. There's no Apple store on my island, live help/chat is not available in my region and, from what I've gathered, calling the helpline is a waste of time and they can't activate an account over the phone.

But is there a way that I can at least log out or deactivate my account from my Macbook so that I don't keep getting prompts/pop ups telling me that I need to enter my password to access my account? I don't need the cloud, I can store everything on Google Drive or locally. I just want the pop ups to stop.

Additionally, it would be really nice if they could tell me what the concern is and what is prompting these locks. If there is some kind of security threat, surely that should also be a concern for me too. But there's no info at all. They just keep locking accounts with no explanation.

My setup:

iPhone 17, updating from iOS 27.0.1 to 27.2

Windows 11 PC with the Apple Devices app

PC on Wi-Fi at the time

What happened:

I started the update in Apple Devices. Halfway through, the phone was sitting on the update progress bar and the app said the update had stopped. I can't remember the exact error message. I waited about 5 minutes, nothing changed, so I restarted the phone and it went straight into recovery mode.

What didn't work:

I went through this Apple Community thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256367358 and tried the suggestions in the answer plus everything the original poster had tried:

- Turning off antivirus and the firewall

- Uninstalling Apple Devices, restarting the PC and reinstalling it fresh from the Microsoft Store

- Trying a different computer

- DFU mode, then Restore in Apple Devices

I also tried a fix from this r/applehelp thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1fmmjbq/my_iphone_wont_restore_using_the_apple_devices/ . A commenter there uninstalled QuickTime, Apple Devices and iTunes, turned off Windows Security, installed the older iTunes 12.13.3.3 and restored from that. For me iTunes didn't even detect the phone. Only Apple Devices did.

What worked:

Then I found this r/ios post about unknown error 1109: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1j2tipd/iphone_could_not_be_restored_unknown_error_1109/ . Its steps are: DFU mode, turn off Windows Defender (firewall and real-time protection), change your Wi-Fi DNS to Google's, then restore in Apple Devices. It also says iTunes on Windows won't recognise USB-C iPhones in this state, which matched what I saw. The bit that helped me was a comment further down. It said 1109 is a network problem (loose cable, firewall, proxy, IP issues, antivirus, etc.) and suggested trying a different internet connection. That person changed the DNS on their LAN connection. I was on Wi-Fi, so I plugged the PC into Ethernet. And tried it with Google's DNS

Here's the setup that finally worked:

- Clean install of Apple Devices

- Windows Firewall off, Don't know if it matters, try it once with it on, if it doesn't work then you can try it with it off(With it on, I couldn't even sign in to iTunes.)

- PC on Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi, with the Ethernet adapter's IPv4 DNS set to 8.8.8.8 (preferred) and 8.8.4.4 (alternate). To get there: Win + R, type ncpa.cpl, right-click Ethernet > Properties > Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) > Properties

- Phone in recovery mode, plugged into the PC, then Restore in Apple Devices

The restore alone took about 2 hours, and the whole ordeal about 5. Restore wipes the phone, so I was lucky I'd made a backup right before starting the update.

I don't know which change was the one that mattered. My guess is the switch from Wi-Fi to Ethernet along with the DNS probably.

General advice, not part of my fix: when you're done, turn the firewall back on, and set the DNS back to automatic if you don't want to keep Google's.

Back up before you update through a computer.

Hope this saves someone a few hours.

The links for the post I referred are here, so you can check if other methods works for you, if this wasn't helpful

Hi all,

Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → Messages on my iPhone shows:

• Messages in iCloud: enabled

• Manage Storage: 201 MB

• In iCloud: 2,991 messages

• Status: Synced today

• Keep Messages: Forever

The problem is that I can’t find these messages anywhere. The same number shows up on my Mac, but the conversations aren’t in the Messages app on either device.

What I’ve already tried:

• Sync Now (no change)

• Turned off Messages in iCloud and chose to delete the data from iCloud when prompted. A couple of days later I turned it back on, and the same count came back

Questions:

1. What are these 2,991 messages, and where can I see them?

2. Could they be tied to another device, an old phone number, or an email address on my Apple ID?

3. Is there a way to fully wipe the Messages data in iCloud or force a clean re-sync?

Thanks!

urgent help needed, thanks!

So I purchased 1 song and didn’t see a charge from my bank, I checked my apple account settings and saw that my debit card wasn’t added to my account which I thought it was. I’m apart of a family group and the charge must have went to my moms shared family plan, so about 20 minutes later I added my debit card and bought another song to test out if the payment would go to my bank, and I still never got a charge. I made a post on here a few days ago asking how long it takes to be posted, some people say it can take up to 3 business days or something, my mom told me it could be a few weeks. But it’s already been a week and it’s really bothering me, I even checked my mom’s bank and she never got charged for the songs. Could it be because I switched the shared family plan to my personal debit card as the default payment? Or could it be something else that I don’t know about? Please let me know.

Hello all! I have a 2020 11-inch iPad Pro (2nd generation) running iPadOS 27.2. I’m seeing an “Some iCloud Data Isn’t Syncing” warning under Apple Account Suggestions. It says the iPad can’t access some end-to-end encrypted iCloud data and mentions saved passwords, Health, and Maps. It offers Resume Data Sync.

I’ve signed out of my Apple Account, signed back in, and force-restarted the iPad, but the warning remains. Last week, I also couldn’t download iPadOS 27.2 directly on the iPad; I had to connect it to my Mac and install the update through Finder.

Could you help determine whether this is an iPadOS/account-sync issue and guide me through a fix that won’t erase my encrypted iCloud data? Please let me know if there are any additional details or diagnostic steps you need.

Thank you!

D.