Apple iOS 14.5 Warning Issued For iPhone Users - Forbes

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04/28 Update below. This post was originally published on April 27

Apple iOS 14.5 / iPadOS 14.5 is here and it is one of the most exciting upgrades iPhone and iPad owners will experience outside of a next-generation release (it’s feature-packed). But now an upgrade warning has been issued about one of its biggest changes.

Apple iOS 14.5 has app tracking problems which are affecting iPhone users

Apple

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iOS 14.5 marks the official launch of Apple's much-hyped ‘App Tracking Transparency’ (ATT) feature, which gives users increased control over how their behaviour is tracked by third-party apps. Unfortunately, it appears to be severely broken for a significant number of iPhone and iPad owners and Apple Support has confirmed a fix will take several days:

“Active issue confirmed by Apple Support, engineers are working on it now. We'll have to hodl [sic] for 72 hours at least” - source

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04/28 Update: Apple has published a new support document detailing its App Tracking Transparency feature and it touches upon three reasons why it may be disabled for some users:

• For users with child accounts or under age 18 by birth year, signed in with their Apple ID*
• If your Apple ID is managed by an educational institution or uses a configuration profile that limits tracking
• If your Apple ID was created in the last 3 days

This adds useful context but it does correlate with wide number of user complaints being reported on social media. A more plausible explanation appears to be a connection with Personalized Ads which was spotted by iOS developer Dave Verwer and has also been championed by others. With this in mind, I expect an iOS 14.5.1 bug fix release to be released sooner rather than later.

Affected iPad and iPhone users are facing multiple issues with the new service. The majority find that ATT either fails to identify a single app that tracks user behaviour (and we already know some of the world’s biggest apps are major offenders) or the feature is disabled completely and cannot be enabled. Understandably, users are frustrated: 

“Dear @Apple, App Tracking toggle and Personalized Ads toggle are grayed out on my iPhone!! Please release an update like iOS 14.5.1, please!!!” - source

“Well, updated to IOS 14.5, Removed the Facebook app, reinstalled it ….  but no app tracking questions are asked!” - source

“Hey @AppleSupport I just updated to iOS 14.5 and have not gotten any prompts about allowing apps to track. I went to Settings > Privacy > Tracking and "Allow Apps to Request to Track" is toggled off but it won't let me turn it on. How do I fix this?” - source

The topic has also taken over several Reddit threads. 

Apple's new App Tracking privacy feature was introduced with iOS 14.5 but it is broken or disabled ... [+] (grayed out) for many users.

Oktay Evin

9to5Mac reports that according to their own “sources with knowledge of the situation, the tracking option should come grayed out by default for Apple IDs of which the owner is under the age of 18 or for devices with an MDM profile that restricts the ‘Allow Apps to Request to Track’ settings. However, in most cases, users are not being able to access the new option even when the two situations mentioned by our sources do not apply to them.”

As such, the site concludes: “Unfortunately, if you’ve already updated to iOS 14.5 and are seeing the grayed-out tracking toggle, there’s not much you can do at the moment”. 

Frustratingly, the problems with ATT are far from the only issues affecting iOS 14.5. Users are also reporting bugs that turn Apple Podcasts into a “mess” as well as isolated incidents of high battery drain, connectivity issues, unlocking delays and app crashes. You can read more in my iOS 14.5 upgrade guide. 

While I would expect Apple to prioritize an urgent iOS 14.5.1 update to address these problems. I have contacted Apple and will update this post if I receive a response. 

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April 28, 2021 at 05:51AM
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Apple iOS 14.5 Warning Issued For iPhone Users - Forbes

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