iPhone and iPad users around the world found Spotify, TikTok and other iOS apps didn't work for a time on July 10. It now seems many of the issues reported are now fixed.
Some users claimed services such as Tinder, Waze, Mario Kart Tour, PUBG Mobile and Pinterest were also down. It's thought to have stemmed from an issue specifically with Facebook's SDK that is used by these apps.
Facebook has acknowledged an issue with its iOS SDK, and it has confirmed that it's investigating the problem. Facebook has now confirmed that it's working on a fix, while many apps like Spotify have managed to solve the issues separately.
- The best music streaming services
- Need a new iPhone? Try our best iPhone ranking
- Everything we know about the iPhone 12
According to Down Detector, a service that monitors online services, the issues began with Spotify at 11:32 BST and continued for a good few hours afterward. A full list of other apps affected is currently unclear, but there's likely to be more than the ones we've listed above.
TechRadar can confirm that the iPhone and iPadOS app for Spotify caused issues for us in our testing. We found the Spotify app didn't load and instead showed the Spotify logo before crashing.
In our tests, we found the service still worked fine on a variety of Android devices, and the desktop apps were also unaffected. This tweet below shows the exact issue that we saw:
@Spotify App is suddenly crashing upon opening App version: 8.5.66iOS: 13.5.1Tried:-Restarting the phone-Redownloading the appany suggestions? pic.twitter.com/zWbzng7NYOJuly 10, 2020
Since publication of this article, we've found the Spotify app is now back up and running.
According to Business Insider, one anonymous developer confirmed that they were able to drop certain Facebook SDK connected features to ensure their apps continue to work as normal. That's a big sign that the issues are due to the Facebook SDK.
Can you fix it right now?
An official fix will need to be issued from Facebook or the other app developers for the issues to be entirely sorted. There is a work around that will allow you to access certain features of the apps.
If you disconnected from the internet, you'll be able to use certain services. For example, we turned off the internet connection on an iPad device and we were once again able to access Spotify and listen to our downloaded playlists.
Remember to disconnect from both Wi-Fi and your mobile internet service as well. We found in the Spotify test we were then able to reconnect to the internet with the app running in the background and it would continue to play music.
You won't be able to reconnect to the internet on certain apps without them crashing though as they'll try to ping Facebook's servers. It's likely that will cause the issue to start again.
That makes apps like Tinder and TikTok relatively useless without access to the internet.
