Is the App Store down?

The App Store is at the heart of the iOS and macOS ecosystem. It’s the portal to great new games, productivity tools, camera apps, and pretty much anything else you want to install on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. So not being able to connect to it is kind of a big deal.

If you’re experiencing difficulties with slow performance, load times, or logging on then the problem could be due to the site itself. We’ll show you how to quickly check whether things are working as they should at Apple’s App Store. For related information, read What to do if your iPhone or iPad can’t connect to the App Store.

At time of writing (4 June 2019, at 2.30pm UK time) Apple is reporting an outage in the App Store, Mac App Store, Apple Music and Radio, so if you’re experiencing a problem you don’t need to worry – it’s not you, it’s them. (Note that this doesn’t appear to be universal – the author is currently able to connect fine, so not everyone is affected at once.)

Visit the Apple System Status page

Your first port of call when checking to see if the App Store is offline or in trouble is the Apple System Status page. This shows the current state of all the Apple online services, letting you know if there are issues or scheduled maintenance that could be causing the problems. It will also indicate whether there were recent disruptions that have now been resolved.

If you do see a message next to the App Store or Mac App Store, clicking on it will bring up more details about the issue, including when the outage occurred and the kind of problems users would have experienced.

For advice on checking for outages in other Apple services, see Is iTunes down? and Is Apple Pay down?

While on the Apple System Status page you can also check on the current health of Apple Pay, Siri, iCloud, Photos, Maps, and pretty much anything else Apple provides. A very handy site to have on your bookmark list.

Visit an independent status checking site

Apple isn’t the only site that provides up to date information about problems and outages on the App Store. Visiting Down Detector will also give you the latest news on any disruptions currently being reported by the service. The site provides the facility to report problems (about any website, not just the App Store) and allows you to see any past issues that have affected performance.

For a more detailed analysis of the App Store status you could try www.isitdownrightnow.com which offers similar data as Down Detector but also features a grid layout displaying access speeds over the past few days.

Just remember that when you search for the App Store to use the following URL – itunes.apple.com – or you’ll have trouble finding it on the site.

Check your device and settings

If, after checking the various status sites listed above, you find that the App Store is working properly then the bad news is that it could be a problem with your device.

Thankfully there’s no need to book that Genius bar appointment just yet as we’ve already prepared a Can’t connect to the iOS App Store? Guide that will take you through steps to get your iPhone or iPad back in the game.

If these don’t work then a trip to the Apple Store is the way to go, but at least you could try out one of those tempting MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models while you wait.