T-Mobile says Apple is to blame for iCloud Private Relay being turned off

Iphone 11 Pro Mint Mobile Hero
Iphone 11 Pro Mint Mobile Hero (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

  • T-Mobile says that it is not to blame for iCloud Private Relay not working on its network.
  • The company says that it has discovered a bug in iOS 15.2 that is causing the issue.
  • According to the company, it is affecting all carriers - not just T-Mobile.

T-Mobile says the blame falls on Apple for users who have noticed that iCloud Private Relay stopped working on the carrier's network.

Yesterday, it was reported that T-Mobile customers were finding that iCloud Private Relay did not work on T-Mobile's cellular network. It wasn't just T-Mobile either - customers from Verizon were also reporting the issue. At first, some thought that the carrier was disabling the feature at the network level.

In a statement to 9to5Mac, the company says that the issue actually lies with Apple. According to the company, a bug in iOS 15.2 turns the setting off by default for users - even if they had it turned on before the update.

Overnight our team identified that in the 15.2 iOS release, some device settings default to the feature being toggled off. We have shared this with Apple. This is not specific to T-Mobile. Again though, we have not broadly blocked iCloud Phone Relay.

The company did clarify, however, that using certain features with the carrier like parental controls does require that iCloud Private Relay be turned off in order for T-Mobile's features to work.

Customers who chose plans and features with content filtering (e.g. parent controls) do not have access to the iCloud Private Relay to allow these services to work as designed. All other customers have no restrictions.

iCloud Private Relay launched as a beta with iOS 15 and allows users to browse the web in private without carriers or internet providers having access to who is searching for what.

Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.