If you opened your Mail app this week on your iPhone or Mac and ran into a problem loading images, it’s not your network. And it seems to be related to a feature you might not even be using.
According to Apple’s System Status page, there’s an issue with iCloud Private Relay this week. iCloud Private Relay acts as a VPN to keep your DNS records and IP address hidden using a “single, secure connection to maintain privacy and performance.” When this connection is interrupted, problems can occur.
Since Thursday, Apple has reported a Private Relay outage affecting “some” iCloud+ users, which can impact the experience within apps that use iCloud+, including Safari and Mail. In this case, the issues appear to manifest themselves in an error message that appears when new Mail messages arrive: “Your network settings prevent content from loading privately.” Based on the timing, this appears to be related to the Private Relay issue, which prevents images from loading as a security measure.
In this case, the “network settings” do not refer to your Wi-Fi or wireless connection, but rather to the private relay mechanism. As long as the problem persists, the message will appear and Apple will not offer any time frame to resolve it. In the meantime, you have two options:
- Click it Load content button below the error message when you need to see an image in an email.
- Turn off iCloud Private Relay in Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > iCloud Private Relay.
However, some iCloud+ users are still seeing the error message despite having iCloud Private Relay turned off on their account, so the issue appears to be affecting iCloud+ accounts that don’t use the feature. Apple hasn’t updated its status page since the issue was confirmed at 2:34 p.m. PT on Thursday, so it’s unclear how widespread the problem is or when it might be resolved.