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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1525170
PSA: Safari Not Working? Turn off iCloud Private Relay (for now) By Jesse Hollington A special thanks to iDropNews for republishing permission. Images provided by iDropNews. Be sure to visit them at idropnews.com Af you’re experiencing slow performance or pages failing to load in Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, the culprit could be Apple’s iCloud Private Relay, which has been experiencing an ongoing outage since yesterday afternoon. iCloud Private Relay is a VPN-like service that Apple provides as part of any paid iCloud storage plan — what the company began calling iCloud+ a few years ago. This means that if you’re paying for any amount of iCloud storage — even the $0.99 per month 50GB plan — then you have iCloud Private Relay as part of your package. When switched on, iCloud Private Relay sends all requests from Safari through Apple’s iCloud servers for encryption and privacy. The concept is similar to using a VPN on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, except it only works through Safari and a few other specific apps rather than protecting all your traffic. It also uses a more sophisticated zero-knowledge encryption technique to protect your privacy, ensuring that even Apple and its relay partners can’t track your browsing activity. Under normal conditions, iCloud Private Relay is an excellent feature for Safari fans, but like any other online service, problems can happen from time to time. Unfortunately, since iCloud Private Relay handles nearly all your browsing, this service can have a much broader impact than something like iCloud Mail or Photos. When iCloud Private Relay is enabled, every request you make in Safari gets encrypted and routed through Apple’s iCloud servers. If those servers can’t keep up, you’re in for a pretty slow experience, no matter how fast your internet connection is. The same problem can occur with traditional VPNs, although usually, it’s pretty obvious when you’re using a VPN since you most likely installed it yourself and switched it on manually. Most VPN aficionados know to turn off the VPN or pick another exit point if things start slowing down. That’s less obvious with iCloud Private Relay since it’s built into the operating system and runs in the background — and you may have enabled it without realizing it somewhere along the way.