CloudKit Problems With iOS 26.4
Looks like Apple broke CloudKit sync in OS 26.4. Remote notifications don’t seem to arrive, so no updates unless the app is relaunched.
There are so many annoying limits and throttles when dealing with iCloud/CloudKit. Now I ran into one where the subscriptions that let you know when content changed are also throttled and limited. From what I’m reading, I might be in push-notification-jail for 24 hours now because I triggered a ton of changes during a test.
Makes it a tad hard to know when I broke something vs. when iCloud just decides to stop sending me stuff for a while.
Has anyone had a
CKSubscriptionjust… stop? It’s a zone change subscription. It’s supposed to generate an invisible push so I can refresh things. This used to work. Then early yesterday it didn’t work anymore. I’ve tried everything I can think of including reverting all code entirely back to a state from a few days ago when I know it worked. But it still doesn’t work. I’ve rebooted things. I’ve reinstalled things. It’s been 27ish hours now since I last saw it work.
Looks like the CloudKit sync issue in *OS 26.4 is real (I can repro with all of my apps), and has the very distinct potential to lead to catastrophic data loss and/or sync conflicts across effectively all apps. Apps only receive changes from the cloud after being quit and relaunched.
Anyone know if the iOS 26.5 beta fixes the CloudKit subscriptions not working bug from 26.4?
It’s hilarious that the iOS 26.5 beta release notes make no mention that they fixed this massive regression with iCloud push sync Apple broke in 26.4.
It seems serious enough to warrant a 26.4.1 update.
Previously:
- CKSyncEngine
- iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4
- CloudKit Reference and Index Issues
- CloudKit Throttles and Debugging
- iCloud Syncing Limitations & Solutions
- Increased iCloud Errors
4 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
> "It seems serious enough to warrant a 26.4.1 update."
No! Wrong solution!
Look, there have been nearly weekly updates anymore. (It was ONE SINGLE WEEK between *OS26.4 and *OS26.5 beta 1. (And in checking I see where in EXACTLY ONE DAY iOS/iPadOS 18.7.* was released (today, because of DarkSword). I count TWENTY *OS releases since... January 26! Seriously, we are talking about(a) Apple releasing twenty releases in 66 days, or an AVERAGE of one release per 3.3 days.
The answer IS NOT for Apple to simply release *26.4.1 as soon as possible. It will only continue this cycle of where developers spend time WEEKLY to deal with updates. The answer is MUCH simpler than the - SLOW DOWN AND RELEASE BUG FREE UPDATES.
It will hurt all around... developers, users, and Apple as a whole. But Apple has lost sight of the long term to deal with short term.
@Dave Yes, they should have slowed down and released bug-free updates. But given the bug is already out, and serious, why wait for 26.5? And do you want to be forced to update to 26.5, which adds new features and probably other bugs, to get this bug fix?
Yeah, this feels like the sort of bug worthy of a point release, especially when Apple promotes iCloud as being reliable. Anyone who is say, setting up a new device and restoring from iCloud, for instance, runs the risk of their data being out of sync if they are on 26.4 and they haven’t manually quit and relaunched apps to get a sync session to work again (admittedly this is an assumption that Apple doesn’t have some sort of different sync process for iCloud backups before a device transfer, where regardless of remote notifications in CloudKit, all data is synced to iCloud servers if there is any hash difference between what’s on the local device and what’s on iCloud for a given container/app — and they might actually do that).
Regardless, this is definitely a big problem if you’re a user and are expecting stuff to sync and it just doesn’t. And the solution is NOT to wait for the next major release, it needs to be a point release.
I respectfully disagree. First, consider: (1) Caruna has been reported out since March 3 and DarkSword since March 18 while (2) Apple released *OS 26.4 on March 24 and iOS 18.7.7 on April 1 and (3) at the same time released *OS 26.5 beta 1 on March 30. So which is it? *OS 26.4.1 or couldn't they just have waited until today to release ALL THREE (26.4, 18.7.7, 26.5 beta 1) at the same time?
@Christina: "... this feels like the sort of bug worthy of a point release..." "... the solution is NOT to wait for the next major release...". Allow me to fix these quotes: 26.4.1 would be a point-point release, as 26.5 is the next point release. And the next major release would be *OS 27, likely to be released in September this year. *OS 26 already has 5 point releases, and 26.4 was released 8 days ago.
