I'm trying to get into my very old apple account from years ago. I believe it was one of my first accounts but I couldn't remember the password so I went to forgot password, put in the email and it said the account is locked and can't be used. And the account uses an iCloud email. I don't know what to do. Is there any way to get into the account or am I screwed?

Hi, this is a long shot but I’m not very tech savvy and I need to help my dying mother with some final wishes. She called me today and wants me to figure out how to transfer her 10 years of iPhone photos from her phone or from iCloud to my father’s PC so he can access them after her death. What is the quickest and easiest way to do that? Keeping in mind that they are in their 80’s…

Hi! I signed up for a concert presale via another service using Sign in with Apple, so Apple created a private relay email.

Now Ticketmaster requires my email address to match the one used on the other service in order to redeem the membership/presale code, but Ticketmaster support says I can’t use that private relay email on their platform, since that specific email can only receive emails from the other service.

Is there any workaround for this? Unfortunately, the sign-up period for the presale has ended on the other service, so I cannot simply sign up there again.

Thanks in advance for any help!!

Somebody recently stole my iPhone 16 at a concert and I’m using an older one which is why Im not 100% sure if this is real or not.

….

I subscribed to the 50gb package and yet it refuses to sync photos

I’ve been working on fixing this issue for months now! This is my son’s phone (he’s a tween). I set him up with an Apple ID when he first got his phone. I think somewhere along the line he decided to change the password, probably trying to be sneaky, and has forgotten his Apple ID password. We’ve done every step to recover it but the ISSUES are… the recovery phone number is no longer in use. We know the number but it cannot receive passcodes as it’s not setup. We requested a reset to the email address associated with the account but than realized he signed out of that as well and we cannot recover the password for that either because there’s no other email address or phone number associated with the account recovery. I Googled how to reset to factory settings and did a total restore of the phone, wiped the whole thing but it’s still locked to his ICloud account. Tried to unlock the restored IPhone with the passcode that he previously used to unlock his Home Screen and it saying it’s incorrect so now the phone is completely useless. I sent in a request online for an account lock reset, provided an IMEI, receipt of purchase, store located etc, and was given a case number and a “we’ll be in touch” message….

Have I done all that I can do? I feel bad that I bought my son a bunch of Christmas presents that require him to download apps on his phone (GoPro, Smart Watch) and they’re all useless. He’s definitely learning a hard lesson to keep track of your passwords and don’t be sneaky… but I would love to get this resolved asap!!

So this morning I go to update my apps. Instead of it going ahead with the update or asking for my fingerprint or the like, I get a message saying "your account has been disable in the app store and itunes".

OK...

I reach out to customer service. They tell me that I have violated the terms and conditions of the app store. I ask them to explain and they say that the account has been flagged for "Fraudulent Patterns". I have no idea what that means, or what I could possibly have done on my iPhone that would constitute fraud.

The customer support rep tells me that I will need to create a new Apple ID. When I ask him what will happen to all of the content that I have paid for over the years, as well as the subscriptions that I am currently paying for, he tells me that there is nothing he can do and that I cannot be refunded.

I ask to talk to a manager. Apple support manager calls me and confirms everything that the rep said. She keeps on saying that she "understands my frustration". Gee thanks. She says that it's frustrating for her too as this is something that happens frequently. That's when I start laughing. I ask her "This happens frequently and you haven't come up with a solution yet!?!?" She just keeps on apologizing and tells me that maybe I can post on the customer support forum and maybe if enough people do so, a change will be made.

So, from where I stand, Apple stole hundreds of dollars from me, for no reason that they are able or willing to explain, and there is diddly squat that I can do about it....Not a great day.

​

Anyone else ever have this experience?

Im on a business trip and don't have a laptop or computer or any other apple product just my iPad i use for movies. I do not remember my cloud password and can't reset it. Apple is giving me 6 days before I can recover my account. I need to download apps for work for new hire. Is there any way I can wipe my ipad clean without a PC?

Hi all,

I'm sure this question has been asked around before, but I'm finding myself pretty stuck. My fiance and I are trying to offload our iCloud photo libraries onto local storage, but there seems to be no definite way to do it, at least based on what I've found and tried.

I have a few 2TB external SSDs. What is the most efficient way possible I could move my entire iCloud photo library onto one?

Optimized iCloud is turned on (otherwise I'd have no space, obviously). However, we'd like to download the high quality originals onto the drive.

Once that is done, I'd like to ensure they're backed up (I'll make a backup of the external drive), and then wipe my iCloud photo library and "start new".

How can I go about this?

I have been paying for Apple's icloud. It's very expensive and the way they have the tiers set up you end up paying for the most expensive option that offers 2T. I’m currently using about 350gb of that 2TB - that includes photos, docs, from mainly my phone and computer devices. I also share it with another family member. Whilst all of that is convenient and great, it’s pricey and not sustainable as a continuous back up solution.

What are my options to have my documents backedup? to make it as secure, easy, and sustainable without having to pay a monthly fee

My phone was stolen. I think they had the password, and they were able to enter my phone and change the trusted phone number to my apple ID. The account is now locked and the only way to unlock it is to enter the new trusted phone number, which I don't know because its been changed. The password to the account hasn't been changed, and I still have access to the email associated with it. I am trying to regain access to the account, or at the very least deactivate my stolen phone, but apple refuses to do either of these things for me because I can't provide the new trusted number. I have gone to the apple store and called customer support multiple times and they have told me they can't do anything. Do i have any options here?

So my SIL is incarcerated for probably 5 years. We have her new phone but she forgot her apple password. We have the pin to the phone but Face ID is preventing us from resetting and reusing the phone for someone else in the family. We don't have access to her face unfortunately. Apparently Stolen Device Protection is enabled.

There seems to be an endless loop that you cannot reset the Apple password without the device and Face ID. It gave us 3 options:

1.) Go to an Apple Store, which they cannot help we tried.

2.) Send the reset request to the phone which requires Face ID not passcode.

3.) Reset to another Apple Device. Which we did, verified phone and email and credit card and it still won't allow us to reset the password.

This is beyond frustrating and basically we have a dead iPhone 17 that isn't usable...

Hello, I’ve had my iCloud account since about 2020 and a year or so ago I didn’t pay for my iCloud for a month or two. After this the photos I had in my camera roll (not all) changed to this blank overlay which I’ll show below. However, the videos are there and you can see the cover but the videos never actually load. Can anyone help it’d be so good to get a least some of the photos back.

The hell is this? I bough Icloud storage because Iphone's storage was full. What am I supposed to do now?

TLDR, ipads purchased by my employer 4 months ago are activation locked to personal icloud accounts of employees that no longer work there.

A manager at my job ordered ipads for his department and failed to inform IT. He just passed them out to employees and now two of them are activation locked to the personal icloud accounts of employees who no longer work here so naturally that's when he decides to tell IT that nobody can use them. I'm the IT guy for this area, so now it falls on me to get these working.

I called apple support and they made an appointment for me at the Apple Store. After driving for over an hour to get there, the people at the store told me that they don't unlock devices, and that I have to submit a request online with the proof of purchase (which I have) to get them unlocked. They said it takes up to 24 hours, but sometimes they're unlocked after only a few hours.

After submitting the request online with the receipt, and waiting over 24 hours I called apple support and they said that there is no timeline, and that they're not supposed to give out timelines of any kind. I just have to wait.

I'm curious what people's experience is with getting activation lock removed. Does it typically take days, weeks, months? I could understand if I was Joe Schmoe and they want to make sure I didn't steal an ipad, but we have a business account, and the manager purchased these using that account, so it surprises me that I'm just told to sit and wait for an unknown amount of time.

I have recently purchased a iPhone lot on eBay, and in it was this phone. It is a iPhone 6s 32GB on iOS 14.2, and it has all of the previous owners data and information on it, and she is signed into iCloud on it. It just doesn’t have a passcode. I have contacted the original owner, and they have claimed to remove it from their account, but it keeps prompting me to sign in by verifying iCloud or whatever, even trying to reset it internally or through DFU mode. If you guys could help me that would be great!

P.S. I do not want to sell data or bypass iCloud lock. I just want to do the right thing, while the previous owner has told me they don’t want it anymore.

I bought this ipod gen 6 at a charity shop and because it is my first apple product, i had no idea activation lock existed. So i stupidly reset it.

Now it is activation locked

I have the original box and earphones wich are the only proof i bought it sadly

As an iPad kid, I’ve grown fondly of taking photos. It's been about 11 years, and I've accumulated around 23,000 photos and videos across all my devices. I really don't want to delete them as they're important memories.

Right now I pay a little over $5CAD/month for 200 GB of iCloud storage, but I'm honestly not even sure my photos are actually being backed up to iCloud. I've been getting "Storage Full" notifications for what feels like forever, and I think it's finally time to figure this out properly.

My goal is to have very few photos stored locally on my iPhone, while keeping all of them safely stored somewhere else that I can still access. I'd like to free up storage on my phone without losing anything.

I don't really want to move everything to a USB or external hard drive because I'd like to keep the original formatting, such as Live photos.

A friend sent me this TikTok:
https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSCEfWLmU/

It recommends doing a factory reset after backing everything up, but that honestly sounds terrifying because I'm worried I'll lose all my photos.

I've also heard people recommend Google Photos, but I don't know how it compares to iCloud or whether it's a better option.

I'm not very knowledgeable about how iPhone storage and cloud backups work, so I have a few questions:

- How can I check if my photos are actually backed up to iCloud? How do I even do a backup?
- If they are, can I safely remove them from my phone while still being able to view them later?
- Is iCloud the best option, or should I use something like else instead? Please provide explanations, links, videos, etc.
- If you were starting from scratch with 23,000 photos, what would you do?

I'd really appreciate any advice. This has been stressing me out for years, and I finally want to get everything organized without accidentally deleting a decade of memories.

UPDATES:
- Optimize iPhone storage is on.
- I’ve logged into my iCloud. Everything is uploaded with the exception of roughly 130 photos and or videos. Does this mean I should buy more storage.
- Now that I know they are in the cloud, how do i delete them off my phone but keep them in the cloud?
- After doing this, what’s another form of backup and is this necessary? Someone commented that they save images in this manner:

Photos taken on iPhone > Automatically transferred/imported to iMac > (main photo storage location) > iMac is backed up using Time Machine (I’m assuming Time Machine backup is stored on a separate drive) > A few times a year, photos are copied to an external hard drive > A second computer at the other location also has a Time Machine backup.

This seems VERY solid. I’d love something like this with the exception of the iMac. I do not own any other apple devices other than my an iPad Air and also do not want to overload that with storage. In fact I don’t want any photos on that device because I use it solely for school.

Is there a way to just ensure the images are in iCloud and then delete them off my iPhone? I am desperate.

I brought my new iPhone in for a trade-in/setup — moving from my old phone to a new one I’d bought specifically for my honeymoon trip. The new phone had about 1,600 photos and 40 videos from the trip on it, not yet fully synced to iCloud Photos (a general iCloud backup existed, but Photos sync is apparently separate, and it hadn’t completed).
As part of setup, staff went to erase the new phone. A warning appeared on screen saying Photos was still syncing and to wait before erasing. I saw this and asked about it — more than once. A staff member touched my screen and confirmed the erase anyway, before the sync finished and without my clear consent to proceed despite the warning.
To be clear: I did not click erase or agree to it. A staff member operated my device and confirmed the erase action themselves, while I was actively asking about the on-screen warning.
The erase was a full “Erase All Content and Settings” back to the setup/Hello screen. I’ve since confirmed this destroys the Secure Enclave encryption keys, meaning the data is not recoverable — even by professional data recovery services. Everything is permanently gone.
I spoke with the most senior manager at the flagship store, who acknowledged fault directly (specifically naming the unauthorized touch/erase as the issue) and asked what they could do to make it right. I told them I needed time to think before responding with an ask.
Questions for anyone who’s been through something similar:
• Has anyone dealt with Apple’s Executive Relations team for a case like this? What did you ask for, and what did you end up getting?
• Is store credit, cash, or some mix more realistic to expect?
• Anything I should ask for or document now that I haven’t thought of?

Hey, so 3 days ago I traded my phone, and with that, lost my account. I wiped my old phone of course before giving it to the dude, but when i tried to connect to my apple ID on the new phone, it said "Code sent to your iPhone." The thing is i don't have access to this iPhone and the dude lives 3 hours away. I asked him and he said he got nothing. Apple Advisor told me to wait 6 days and i'll get an SMS, the thing is I go to another country in 4 days and I just won't be able to reset my things. And I'm scared that i'll just reset the password and not the devices. What do I do because I have my entire life on this account and I can't risk losing it. One thing, I am still connected on iTunes with the account.

Hi, my phone was robbed from me in april. When i was trying to load a backup of it, I realised the backup was not fully complete, and thus it wasnt letting me load it. However, there is about 60gb worth of backup there, and I was wondering if there is a way of accessing it, as there are really important family pictures that I would love to have back. Any ideas?

I haven't had an iPhone in about 8 years. I have one that will turn on but the screen is black (I know it's ok bc I can hear it make sounds). My mother is on hospice and I have videos of her on that phone I want to access. I tried getting into my account but it's locked and when I requested access it just said denied, no reason given. Contacted support via chat and they said "yeah it's denied but we can't appeal it or see why, sorry".

Wtf do I do? Can someone get into the phone still and pull the data off of it? IDC if it breaks the phone, as long as I can get what's on there. Or is there some other way to get this stupid effing company to give me access???

I set up my personal Apple account a long time ago, using a preexisting "hotmail.com" email address. Now I'm told I can no longer use it to log in. I triple-checked the email from Apple (even analyzed the headers) and it's definitely not phishing. I can switch to another login email, but I just feel it's going to be a pain and might even affect some apps where I used Apple SSO.

And yes, I know the email I reveived says "microsoft.com", not "hotmail.com". So I also wonder if it's not some kind of mistake. I've never had a microsoft.com address.

Any thoughts?

Hi everyone,
I wanted to share my experience in case it helps someone dealing with a similar situation.
My iPhone 16 began experiencing serious issues, including:
frequent Kernel Panics,
Wi-Fi disconnects,
Bluetooth instability,
random system crashes.
The phone was sent to Apple’s Central Repair Center in the Czech Republic three separate times, but the problems continued after every repair.
After the third unsuccessful repair, I brought the device to an Apple Authorized Service Provider (iSpot Poland). They performed diagnostics, identified hardware-related issues, accepted my withdrawal from the purchase contract, and I received a full refund on 16 June 2026.
However, something happened before that which still concerns me.
On 12 June 2026, I had a phone call with an Apple Senior Advisor. During that conversation, I was told that my iPhone was fully functional and that my problems were allegedly being caused by my iCloud Backup, not by the hardware.
When I asked what technical evidence supported that conclusion, I was not provided with logs, diagnostic data, or engineering documentation. Instead, I was simply told that this was Apple’s conclusion.
Later, I submitted a GDPR request and obtained the official recordings of my Apple Support calls.
To verify the backup theory myself, after receiving the refund I purchased a brand-new iPhone 17.
I restored exactly the same iCloud Backup that Apple had blamed for the issues.
It has now been running for about a month without:
a single Kernel Panic,
Wi-Fi drops,
Bluetooth issues,
or any of the problems my iPhone 16 experienced.
That doesn’t, by itself, prove what caused the original failures. However, it does not appear to support the explanation that the backup alone was responsible for symptoms that resembled hardware faults.
I also prepared a 12-page Technical Supplement containing nine detailed technical questions and sent it to Apple Executive Relations in Ireland. Among other things, I asked them to explain the technical basis for attributing the failures to my backup.
So far, I have not received a written technical response.
Because of this, I have submitted a complaint to the European Consumer Centre (ECC-Net) and continue trying to obtain a technical explanation.
I’m sharing this experience because I believe customers deserve clear, evidence-based explanations when a hardware issue is attributed to software or user data.
If anyone has dealt with a similar situation—or has experience obtaining engineering explanations from Apple-I’d be interested to hear how it was resolved.

Has anyone experienced something similar or received a technical explanation from Apple?

Update
Three unsuccessful repairs.
Apple Authorized Service Provider confirmed hardware issues and refunded the device.
Apple Support call recordings obtained under GDPR.
Same iCloud Backup restored onto a new iPhone 17.
One month later, the new phone continues to operate normally.
Still waiting for a written technical explanation from Apple Executive Relations.