Apple has confirmed that its iCloud Private Relay service is experiencing an ongoing outage affecting some users, confirming the service may be slow or even unavailable as a result.
The company's System Status support page says that the issue has been ongoing overnight, and as of Friday morning is still not fixed. Apple confirmed "Some users are affected," and stated, "This service may be slow or unavailable."
You might not know about iCloud Private Relay or what it does, but if you've woken up this morning and found your iPhone's Safari browser isn't working properly this could be the cause. Multiple reports on social media indicate people are having problems with iPhone Safari becoming stuck when they type in a search request or website.
iPhone Safari slowdown
iCloud Private Relay is a feature found in Apple's iCloud Plus subscription service and is designed to make browsing the web more private. It takes information used to identify your internet activity, such as DNS records and your IP address, and hides it all so that "no single party" can see both who you are and what sites you're visiting."
The information for each is sent through two separate, secure internet relays.
"Your IP address is visible to your network provider and to the first relay, which is operated by Apple. Your DNS records are encrypted, so neither party can see the address of the website you’re trying to visit," Apple explains. Likewise, a second relay generates a temporary IP address, decrypts the name of the website you're trying to visit, and then connects you to the site. It's all part of Apple's ongoing push to make Safari a very private browser on its best iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Sadly right now, it's not working. We'll keep you posted as to any updates.
