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iCloud keeps turning off in iOS 7 and prompting for password

Morac

Morac

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Dec 30, 2009
2,383
734
I and many others over at the Apple discussion forums are having a problem where the device (in my case iPad 2 3G) starts prompting for the iCloud password over and over again. Sometimes all iCloud data is wiped from the device and many times "Find My Ipad/iPhone" gets turned off.

I've had this problem every few days since upgrading to iOS 7.0.2 (never saw it in iOS 7). Here's all the instances I've seen and what I've tried to fix it:

1. iCloud Password prompt was appearing nearly every time I used an app that saves data in iCloud or went into the backup settings. I kept entering my password over and over, but that didn't help. I went into the iCloud settings and entered my password there, but that made no difference. At some point "Find My iPad' disabled itself so I turned it back on. I ended up removing my iCloud account from my iPad and doing a hard reset and adding it back on. I thought this fixed it as the problem went away for a few days until...

2. I put my iPad 2 in airplane mode. When I took it out, I got an iCloud prompt. I entered my password and everything seemed okay until several days later....

3. I unlocked my iPad 2 in the morning and a prompt stating I needed to verify my backup password displayed within about 10 seconds. I entered my password and checked in the Backup and saw it was doing a backup and that it failed. I then manually backed up and that worked. At this point I noticed my calendar (even non-iCloud events), contacts and notes were completely empty. What's odd is that iCloud Mail still worked. I restarted my iPad and everything came back, but when I went into the iCloud settings, and "Find My iPad" was off. If I tried to find my iPad using the app on my iPhone it said my iPad was offline. I enabled the setting and it started working. Things were okay until...

4. I got an iCloud password prompt shortly after exiting the Calendar app last night. I canceled this and went into the iCloud settings and cleared out and re-entered my password. For good measure I did the same in the Mail, Contacts and Calendar settings. I then restarted my iPad and it seemed okay.


So basically every few days, my iPad starts having problems communicating with iCloud. Even when my iPad isn't having issues, I find that if I go into the iCloud settings, that the "Find My iPad" frequently shows as off for a few seconds before switching to on. Basically it's like my iPad isn't remembering the "Find my iPad" status and needs to keep checking with the iCloud servers. Combined with the service communication/password issue, it sometimes gets stuck off.

Is anyone else having this problem (other than those who posted to Apple forums). Anyone have any idea how to fix this? iCloud worked perfectly in iOS 6 and it works fine on my iPhone 5s running iOS 7, but it's having major problems on my iPad 2 running iOS 7.
 
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It's not the password as rebooting the device "fixes" the problem, for a while.

See the thread over at Apple Discussions.
 
Well with my iPad 2 being fine since I restored it on Saturday, I decided to take a chance and ran the game that triggered my iCloud problems originally. Sure enough after playing for about 10 minutes, all the iCloud services, excluding Find my iPad, but including backup, turned off. As a result all my iCloud stored data was removed from my iPad. I turned everything back on and all the data came back with two exceptions: PhotoStream photos older than 30 days (really annoying since I save all photos that way) and contact ringtone/texttones associations as that isn't saved to iCloud (very annoying since they need to be set manually).

After using the IPhone configuration utility program to look at the logs on the iPad in real time, I'm nearly certain I know the problem. When using an app that takes up a lot of memory (enough that it gets low memory warnings) and reads/writes iCloud data (not sure about this part), the normal Apple services related to accounts, security, iCloud, etc fail to load because of lack of memory and continuously generate more and more errors. Eventually iCloud just turns off.

Unfortunately this can sometimes lead to data corruption on the device where it will continue to have issues with iCloud until the device is restored. I think an alternative to that may be to delete iCloud and the iCloud backup and hard reset and turn back on. Either way it's really annoying and didn't happen until I installed iOS 7.

This only affects devices with 512 MB (iPhone 4/4S, iPad 2/mini) because they barely have enough memory to run iOS 7. Any app that uses app the remaining memory can trigger this problem. There are no apps I know of that will use the entire 1 GB of newer iPads and iPhones so they don't experience this problem, despite the bug.


Based on this, I have a theory that turning off iCloud Documents & Data may prevent this from occurring. Unfortunately if it's already occurring it's likely already too late. I managed to get it to stop originally by deleting iCloud off my device and deleting the iCloud backup and then backing up to iTunes, doing a restore and then restoring from backup. As such that might be needed, though it's possible that simply deleting iCloud off the device and deleting the backup and then doing a hard reset, might be good enough. I don't know. What I do know is this needs to be fixed by Apple.
 
I've been following the lengthy thread in the Apple communities regarding this issue. I deleted Hay Day (another memory intensive game), and haven't had any problems since.

It is a security problem though, since it can disable Find My Phone.
 
Just had this happen to me today. All iCloud settings turned off randomly.
 
I haven't seen the problem since I've stopped playing memory intensive games on my iPad. I don't like having to limit myself though.
 
Morac said:
I haven't seen the problem since I've stopped playing memory intensive games on my iPad. I don't like having to limit myself though.
Click to expand...

Maybe I was unlucky. I've been playing the same games since the release of iOS 7 and haven't had any issue. I'm on a 4S.
 
DarkCole said:
Maybe I was unlucky. I've been playing the same games since the release of iOS 7 and haven't had any issue. I'm on a 4S.
Click to expand...

Does the game save data in iCloud? I'm pretty sure that's part of the cause.
 
I guess I completely jinxed myself as today, iCloud wasn't just off, my entire account was gone. It asked me to log in to an iCloud account. The same thing with my Game Center account.

What was odd is that all my iCloud data was still there and my Game Center was still working.

I turned off my iPad and turned it back on and my account showed up as if nothing had happened, so I was logged into iCloud despite Settings saying I was not.
 
I have the same problem. I came across an article from 2011 regarding similar symptoms that suggested clicking Cancel when prompted for the password, and then going into Settings-iCloud-Account and erasing the password there. I'm going to give that a try.
 
I too have this issue but only on my original iPad Mini, not on my iphone 5, but both running same, latest version of ios

> icloud turns off
> find my ipad turns off
> icloud backups turn off
> disables the devices as one of my secure devices

Seems to happen roughly every 2-3 days.

Any known fixes yet?
 
Morac said:
I haven't seen the problem since I've stopped playing memory intensive games on my iPad. I don't like having to limit myself though.
Click to expand...

Same problem here, on 4S and iPod 5G (512MB devices?)

The workaround I found is to consciously go to multi tasking and kill all apps before launching a game and when I'm finished playing, I have to kill the game.
It almost feels like I'm back to my Android days.

I rarely open memory intensive games these days because of this.
 
Is anyone having this issue on a 5s? I am about to add an iCloud email to my sons phone and cannot afford to have these issues as he will be away at college. Thanks for the replys
 
jsf721 said:
Is anyone having this issue on a 5s? I am about to add an iCloud email to my sons phone and cannot afford to have these issues as he will be away at college. Thanks for the replys
Click to expand...

I have not. I'm 99.9% sure this problem is memory related and the 5S has 1 GB of RAM, double what the older devices have.
 
Morac said:
Does the game save data in iCloud? I'm pretty sure that's part of the cause.
Click to expand...

Sorry for such a late reply! I've been having this issue a lot more frequently now.
The games that usually cause it every time are:

Tap Paradise Cove
Clumsy Ninja
Dragon City

My phone starts to lag really bad and then prompts me to log into iCloud. Sometimes all the settings are off and I have to turn them all back on, or sometimes I just have to log back in and they're all still on. Really sucks! It also turns off your iCloud back-up too.
 
After over a month of not having this problem, I got a prompt asking me for my backup password. I should have rebooted then, but I didn't. The next day I got it again, so I rebooted.

After that Find My IPad (2) was off and I had lost all the ringtone settings in my Contacts and lost my photostream photos, so iCloud had turned itself off. The contact and photostream issues are an annoyance, but having Find My turn off is a major problem.
 
I restored my phone via iTunes and haven't had this problem for a couple weeks now. I've been playing all sorts of games and it seems to work normal.
 
A fix sort of...

I have had this problem ever since IOS 7 was released and i have been looking everywhere for a solution. I did find that when i reset the settings on my iPhone that the problem was resolved for about a day or two. I haven't figured out what caused it but i have a quick fix although it wont completely solve the problem, it will most likely happen again. Its really odd but i also noticed that game center signs out as well as the iCloud but when you go into settings/ game center and sign in again it will actually stop. I'm actually not 100% sure this works I did it once and haven't had a problem since, it has been a couple weeks. I will admit it honestly could have just been a coincidence. Since i don't know what caused this I have no reason to believe it is a permanent solution it will probably happen again. But hey this is much better than having to reset your phone every time iCloud acts act up...
 
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Red0149 said:
I have had this problem ever since IOS 7 was released and i have been looking everywhere for a solution. I did find that when i reset the settings on my iPhone that the problem was resolved for about a day or two. I haven't figured out what caused it but i have a quick fix although it wont completely solve the problem, it will most likely happen again. Its really odd but i also noticed that game center signs out as well as the iCloud but when you go into settings/ game center and sign in again it will actually stop. I'm actually not 100% sure this works I did it once and haven't had a problem since, it has been a couple weeks. I will admit it honestly could have just been a coincidence. Since i don't know what caused this I have no reason to believe it is a permanent solution it will probably happen again. But hey this is much better than having to reset your phone every time iCloud acts act up...
Click to expand...

Still fixed?

I've reset all settings, and later did a restore and backup, and the problems have come back... (iPhone 4s, iOS 7.1)
 
farleysmaster said:
Still fixed?



I've reset all settings, and later did a restore and backup, and the problems have come back... (iPhone 4s, iOS 7.1)
Click to expand...


There is no fix. Work around is to restart your phone at least daily.
 
This has been happening to me a lot.. I keep losing all my contacts. I called apple & they walked me thru steps said it would be good now. & nope.. It's still happening. Contacts gone! All my icloud stuff.. Gone! & when I try to import contacts it doesn't even give me options to pick to import. & not all my contact options in setting are there under mail, contacts, and calendars.This is the worst!! It's driving me crazy lol
 
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Same problem with iPad 2

My wife an I are having the same behavior. Seems the find my iPad drops more frequent, but randomly lose all iCloud sync settings. Seems to be every time i get promoted to sign into icloud and/or Gamecenter.

I think it is something to do with WAN availability. It happens more often when I am in a limited wifi area
 
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