iCloud sign in issue

[droliff]

Hello all,

I have been having trouble signing in to my iCloud account for several weeks on
my 2017 27” iMac running macOS Catalina 10.15.6
It seems to have started when I was having issues with my ‘keychain access’, had
to delete the keychain files and start over.

I currently am logged in to iCloud with the same Apple ID and password I’ve
had for years on several other devices:

2013 27” iMac running macOS Sierra 10.12.6
5th generation iPad iOS 13.6.1
4th generation Apple TV
iPhone 8 iOS 13.6.1
iPhone 6s iOS 13.6.1

I’ve tried various fixes, including deleting iCloud preference files, changing
Apple ID password etc. You can see the step by step process that I take
in attempting to log in to iCloud with my Apple ID and password on the
attached jpeg. I also have a full sized jpeg of this illustration at
this link.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Dennis

 

[Honza1]

I expect answer here is yes, but anyway: did you try to go in iCloud on line and make sure this computer is logged out/removed from there first? If I recall correctly, devices are listed and can be logged out.

 

[James_C]

I have it as well, its a bug in the current version of Catalina, I can remove it by signing in, but it then comes back a couple of days later. I am just ignoring it at the moment. Hopefully Apple will release a fix soon, or I will wait until Big Sur is released.

 

[MacLawyer]

I keep getting prompted to sign into iCloud as well. 10.15.7 on a 2020 iMac.

 

[droliff]

I keep getting prompted to sign into iCloud as well. 10.15.7 on a 2020 iMac.

I was having so many issues while using macOS Catalina 10.15.7, including regular kernel panic shutdowns, that I just did a clean install of macOS Mojave on my 2017 27" iMac 5K. I'll see if the same issues occur now, as I wasn't exactly sure that Catalina was causing the problems.

 

[brianmowrey]

I keep getting prompted to sign into iCloud as well. 10.15.7 on a 2020 iMac.

That sounds a bit different than the OP, who did not report being prompted to sign in.

The OP’s issue seems to be that Catalina does not recognize that his Apple ID is provisioned for iCloud (treating it like an Apple ID that has only been used for iTunes/App Store).

Your issue is a more classic flavor of either Keychain troubles or network/security setting problems. I would start by creating a new User to see if iCloud stays signed in. If it does, that suggests Keychain. However, it can also not work and be a Keychain problem, since iCloud syncs Keychains.

 

[droliff]

That sounds a bit different than the OP, who did not report being prompted to sign in.

The OP’s issue seems to be that Catalina does not recognize that his Apple ID is provisioned for iCloud (treating it like an Apple ID that has only been used for iTunes/App Store).

Your issue is a more classic flavor of either Keychain troubles or network/security setting problems. I would start by creating a new User to see if iCloud stays signed in. If it does, that suggests Keychain. However, it can also not work and be a Keychain problem, since iCloud syncs Keychains.

While troubleshooting the Apple ID issue, I did create a new user and that solved the problem, but only for a few days.
It was pretty frustrating. Now that I'm back on Mojave, we'll see if any of the issues that I had with Catalina will pop up again.

 

[brianmowrey]

Hopefully. Rolling back to Mojave will still retain the same firmware, which may play some subtle role in Apple ID recognition. Also, even though your 10.12 machine and iOS devices are not having the same issue, it could be something off in how your Apple ID is provisioned in Apple’s server-space. So there’s two different ways this could be even trickier to pin down.

 

[droliff]

Hopefully. Rolling back to Mojave will still retain the same firmware, which may play some subtle role in Apple ID recognition. Also, even though your 10.12 machine and iOS devices are not having the same issue, it could be something off in how your Apple ID is provisioned in Apple’s server-space. So there’s two different ways this could be even trickier to pin down.

Thanks for the input. I've got to say, even though troubleshooting the various issues I was having with macOS Catalina, including the Apple ID issue with iCloud, I learned quite a bit. I didn't know much about 'Fusion drives' and when I had Catalina on this 2017 iMac, I saw that the internal drive was separated into two parts within the container... Macintosh HD and Data. When I reset the Fusion drive in terminal

diskutil resetFusion

and installed Mojave I noticed that the internal drive, although still considered a Fusion drive, had only one part... Macintosh HD. Apparently, when you install Catalina, the installation process splits the Fusion drive into two parts?

 

[brianmowrey]

That’s how Catalina will behave on all drives. Two volumes, system and data, which both answer to the same name. Very fragile, plus hurts one’s brain just to think about it * edit: page I meant to link

 

[droliff]

That’s how Catalina will behave on all drives. Two volumes, system and data, which both answer to the same name. Very fragile, plus hurts one’s brain just to think about it * edit: page I meant to link

Wow. Thanks for the link to that page. Seeing things in a visual manner like that always helps me understand a complex situation like this. Bravo! I'll bookmark that.