Developers complain about stability issues with iCloud servers that prevent syncing properly

Recently, many developers have complained about the stability problem of Apple’s iCloud server, which has caused some applications that have already implemented iCloud support to be unable to sync properly. Since November last year, developers have complained about CloudKit connectivity issues on developer forums and Twitter. Some apps with built-in iCloud support will get a “Request failed with HTTP status code 503” error.

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The developers behind the popular note-taking app GoodNotes see this issue frequently, and they wrote a support document for customers who encounter this error message. The GoodNotes team says the app automatically retries the connection, so the problem will eventually be fixed, but they’re not sure what caused the connection error to start.

According to the GoodNote team: “HTTP 503 is a temporary error code (‘Service Unavailable’) that indicates that the iCloud server is not properly responding to requests from your device. This error is usually resolved with GoodNotes’ automatic retry, but we accept There have been many reports of this bug persisting, causing sync to fail. The issue was not apparent to us and we have escalated the case to Apple’s technical support team for investigation. This appears to be happening with other apps as well.”

Some developers pointed out that their apps worked for years without any issues before the sudden iCloud server issue, which was apparently the cause of the error message. From a developer on the Apple forums:

I have the same problem with a relatively small percentage of my users. They get 503 errors now, but they didn’t get them last year. My code has not changed. I don’t even know how to file a bug report because I can’t reproduce the problem on my device and it only happens to a relatively small percentage of users.

A handful of developers have been able to get help from Apple Engineering, and one of them was able to change their developer account’s iCloud container to fix the issue, but it seems that many developers are still having issues. Other developers have resorted to building iCloud status dashboards into their apps so customers can see when iCloud isn’t working.

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