iCloud sign in weirdness on Apple TV 4K

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Feb 19th, 2021 10:47 am

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Feb 9th, 2021 2:42 pm

alpovs [OP]: Deal Fanatic; Sep 16, 2013; 8623 posts; 6286 upvotes; SW ON

Feb 9th, 2021 2:42 pm

iCloud sign in weirdness on Apple TV 4K

First of all I am not an Apple person. I have Apple TVs 4K and like them but don't have any other Apple devices. I don't know much about the Apple ecosystem.

Some time ago my Apple TVs 4K started asking me to verify the password for my AppleID. One time it even happened while I was watching a movie on Plex. That was weird but not so much as the following.

When I was asked to enter my password again it didn't sign me in. It didn't give any kind of error. It took me to the page in settings where it showed I was signed out of iCloud. I tried to sign in again, and it didn't sign me in again. It showed briefly "Signing in" and then dropped me back to the menu where it showed the sign-in prompt again. No error messages. I went to another Apple TV 4K, signed out of iCloud and couldn't sign in back in the same way as on the other Apple TV. I thought maybe someone hijacked my account. I have iTunes installed on my PC. I successfully signed in to it, so my password is correct and valid. I went to appleid.apple.com and could successfully sign in to my account. But I can't sign in on my Apple TVs. Then I found that I received an email from Apple stating "Welcome to iCloud". The time of this email coincides with my first failed attempt to sign in on my Apple TV. The thing is my Apple TVs had been signed in to iCloud for a couple of years before this started happening. Isn't it weird?

I noticed the problem is only with iCloud, no problem (yet) with sign-in to the Apple Store, the TVs stay signed in. I wasn't sure if iCloud was even needed for what I do on my Apple TVs, and it looks like it's not. I am OK for now but wonder what it was. Did anyone have a similar experience lately?

13 replies

Feb 9th, 2021 4:22 pm

audit13: Deal Expert; Feb 24, 2003; 21292 posts; 9220 upvotes; Toronto

Feb 9th, 2021 4:22 pm

This is weird. iCloud is normally used for uploading pictures, videos, documents, and USERIDs and passwords from keychain.

I am signed into iCloud on my Apple TV because I have Apple IDs for different countries so the country flags appear next to each ID.

+1

Feb 10th, 2021 12:37 pm

alpovs [OP]: Deal Fanatic; Sep 16, 2013; 8623 posts; 6286 upvotes; SW ON

Feb 10th, 2021 12:37 pm

audit13 wrote: ↑ This is weird. iCloud is normally used for uploading pictures, videos, documents, and USERIDs and passwords from keychain.

I am signed into iCloud on my Apple TV because I have Apple IDs for different countries so the country flags appear next to each ID.

You reminded me that I also have two Apple IDs, one for the US and one for Canada, although I don't have country flags next to them. Do you see the flags on Apple TV or on your other devices? I tried signing in to iCloud with my other Apple ID and it was the same. Then I tried mistyping my password and I got an error message, so Apple knows that my password is correct, it's just not signing me in. I tried changing DNS just in case but it didn't help. Now I am afraid one day it will kick me out of the App Store.

I wonder if you were getting reminders to verify your iCloud password in the past few months. I think I started getting them after an upgrade to tvOS 14.0.

Would you be willing to try signing out and in from/to iCloud on your Apple TV? Could be risky though based on my experience. I just wonder if I was singled out for some reason. Did Apple start charging for iCloud storage by any chance? Just googled, no: "When you sign up for iCloud, you automatically get 5GB of free storage." Maybe I got over this free limit? Do you know if there is a way to check how much out of this 5GB is in use? I don't have any other Apple devices. Is there a way to log into iCloud from a browser?

EDIT: I found the answer: www.icloud.com Logged in and I see "5 GB available". Strange that zero was used. My Apple TVs were logged in for a couple of years. I guess they didn't store anything there. I also see my Apple TVs listed under my devices. Why can't I sign in then...
EDIT2: It's funny. I just noticed that it says "You are signed in and running iOS 8, MacOS Yosemite, watchOS 1, or later on these devices". Really?

Feb 10th, 2021 2:10 pm

audit13: Deal Expert; Feb 24, 2003; 21292 posts; 9220 upvotes; Toronto

Feb 10th, 2021 2:10 pm

Have you given you Apple ID to others to use?

I'm running tvOS 14.4.

Yes, I see the flags which makes it easier to switch from one country to another. You have to use the flag as your avatar.

Images

+1

Feb 10th, 2021 10:55 pm

alpovs [OP]: Deal Fanatic; Sep 16, 2013; 8623 posts; 6286 upvotes; SW ON

Feb 10th, 2021 10:55 pm

audit13 wrote: ↑ Have you given you Apple ID to others to use?

Oh, no! Some might know the email address I use as Apple ID but not the password and they don't know that this email is Apple ID.

audit13 wrote: ↑ I'm running tvOS 14.4.

Yes, I see the flags which makes it easier to switch from one country to another. You have to use the flag as your avatar.

I am running the same tvOS version. I don't see anywhere in the settings anything about avatars. Maybe you created them on other Apple devices?

Oh, well. I still can't sign in to iCloud on Apple TVs, yet I can in the browser. There is complete lack of troubleshooting possibilities. On Android or Windows I could have looked at the logs or received emails about authentication errors. Here is nothing except for that strange "Welcome to iCloud" email. I guess no more Apple for me. I hope my existing Apple TVs will last for a while and Apple won't kick me out the App Store.

Thanks for trying to help.

+1

Feb 10th, 2021 11:40 pm

audit13: Deal Expert; Feb 24, 2003; 21292 posts; 9220 upvotes; Toronto

Feb 10th, 2021 11:40 pm

Go to iCloud.com, sign in, click on settings, edit your picture. I said avatar in error.

Maybe time for a factory reset?

+1

Feb 11th, 2021 6:01 pm

alpovs [OP]: Deal Fanatic; Sep 16, 2013; 8623 posts; 6286 upvotes; SW ON

Feb 11th, 2021 6:01 pm

audit13 wrote: ↑ Go to iCloud.com, sign in, click on settings, edit your picture. I said avatar in error.

Maybe time for a factory reset?

Thanks for the avatar/picture pointer. I can do it for one account but I can't login to the other. The website (icloud.com) says I have to use iCloud first on some Apple device before I can use it in browser. Looks like I never signed in to iCloud with that account from my ATVs and now I am not able to. I doubt factory reset will help because the same issue started about the same time on more than one ATV.

I googled and found many posts about this issue but most of them are about 2FA. It's definitely not enabled for my Apple ID because every time I log in to iCloud from browser it insists I should enable it but I never did. I found one post about the situation like mine - no 2FA. After multiple suggestions that didn't work the OP wrote "well wonders never cease; box magically started working again just now" https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8066751
I guess I'll wait for that moment

Anyway, after this exercise I learned that I don't need iCloud on Apple TV and never needed it or used despite being signed into it.

+1

Feb 11th, 2021 9:33 pm

kramer1: Deal Addict; Apr 29, 2018; 3148 posts; 2417 upvotes; Vancouver

Feb 11th, 2021 9:33 pm

iCloud has been having issues recently. Get the same prompts on my Mac/iPhone from time-to-time

Can't Stop. Won't Stop. Game Stop

+1

Feb 13th, 2021 1:21 am

CameraBill: Deal Addict; Sep 3, 2005; 1682 posts; 296 upvotes

Feb 13th, 2021 1:21 am

my 3rd gen podcast app doesn't work well if i don't have a credit card associated with my itunes account

Feb 18th, 2021 4:48 pm

Gromit: Member; Mar 5, 2003; 347 posts; 18 upvotes; Ottawa

Feb 18th, 2021 4:48 pm

This has been screwy for quite a long time. Every time I start up my apple tv 4k for the last few months, I get a "verify your apple id" prompt four times in a row. Entering my password again would do nothing, it would accept it, but the next day it was the exact same "verify your apple id" question. Eventually, I just stopped entering it and just chose Ignore when it asked, as all the functionality worked (and Settings / Users shows me logged in).

A couple of weeks ago I actually chose the iCloud Logout function, as I really don't use that part. I thought that maybe that was the source of the problem. But the only affect was that now instead of asking for the password four times, it asked twice. So it appears that two prompts were from icloud, and two from the normal apple id.

I wanted to try a logout - re-login step, but for some stupid reason you can't log out of the store without it completely erasing the user, and I was unwilling to do that.

+1

Feb 18th, 2021 9:58 pm

alpovs [OP]: Deal Fanatic; Sep 16, 2013; 8623 posts; 6286 upvotes; SW ON

Feb 18th, 2021 9:58 pm

Gromit wrote: ↑ This has been screwy for quite a long time. Every time I start up my apple tv 4k for the last few months, I get a "verify your apple id" prompt four times in a row. Entering my password again would do nothing, it would accept it, but the next day it was the exact same "verify your apple id" question. Eventually, I just stopped entering it and just chose Ignore when it asked, as all the functionality worked (and Settings / Users shows me logged in).

A couple of weeks ago I actually chose the iCloud Logout function, as I really don't use that part. I thought that maybe that was the source of the problem. But the only affect was that now instead of asking for the password four times, it asked twice. So it appears that two prompts were from icloud, and two from the normal apple id.

I wanted to try a logout - re-login step, but for some stupid reason you can't log out of the store without it completely erasing the user, and I was unwilling to do that.

Thanks. Interesting. In my case it was only about iCloud. Now I am afraid it will start doing this for the App Store.

Feb 18th, 2021 10:01 pm

audit13: Deal Expert; Feb 24, 2003; 21292 posts; 9220 upvotes; Toronto

Feb 18th, 2021 10:01 pm

Strange I signed into 4 different iTunes/app store and iCloud accounts many months ago and have never been prompted to sign in again on my Apple TV 4k Box.

+1

Feb 18th, 2021 10:10 pm

alpovs [OP]: Deal Fanatic; Sep 16, 2013; 8623 posts; 6286 upvotes; SW ON

Feb 18th, 2021 10:10 pm

It was quiet for me for a couple of years, then started happening. I remember it started after an update to tvOS 14 but not immediately. Maybe a coincidence.

+1

Feb 19th, 2021 10:47 am

audit13: Deal Expert; Feb 24, 2003; 21292 posts; 9220 upvotes; Toronto

Feb 19th, 2021 10:47 am

alpovs wrote: ↑ It was quiet for me for a couple of years, then started happening. I remember it started after an update to tvOS 14 but not immediately. Maybe a coincidence.

I upgraded my Apple TV to tvOS (non-beta) from 13 when it was first released and it's been fine since. I wonder if something went wrong during the upgrade process.

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