Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime Services Down for Some

Apple’s popular iMessage and Facetime services have been down since approximately 12:15 PDT for some iPhone and Mac users. Apple’s acknowledged the outage on its Apple Services, Stores, and iCloud Systems Status page, but is not giving guidance on when the services will be restored.

Users that are having trouble sending iMessages from their iPhones should send messages as texts or MMS instead. Read our guide on how to force sending iMessages as text messages here.

 

As of the publishing time of this article, the services have been down for three hours. While some Apple customers are complaining loudly about the FaceTime and iMessage outages on Twitter, Facebook and other social media services, we have been unable to replicate the problems on our own devices.

Apple’s iPhone sends messages as iMessages by default rather than SMS so long as all recipients are on iOS devices. iMessages can be delivered to iPhones, iPads, iPod touches and Mac computers. The system is generally reliable day-to-day, but the system has had several outages since it launched.

FaceTime is also still down for some users according to Apple. The video calling service is another Apple service that connects iOS and OS X users. Many prefer it to competing platforms like Skype because voice calls can easily be transitioned to video calls.

Apple’s System Status page doesn’t give any indication of how many users are experiencing problems with iMessage and Facetime at the moment. While Apple’s site does advise customers having issues with its services to contact Apple customer support, representatives likely won’t be able to assist users on an individual basis.

While Apple has a strong reputation for building quality hardware and software, its iCloud and messaging services have not lived up to some longtime Apple fans’ expectations, leaving some to turn to alternatives.

Read our guide on how Apple customers can check the status of iMessage, Facetime and other online services.