Don't Panic
Spotify, TikTok and a slew of other apps are down for Apple users
How are people going to listen to music and then create dances to the best 10 seconds of it?
Scores of Apple users have taken to social media to say TikTok and Spotify's apps aren't working on their iPhones. The problem extends to other, less-famous, apps too, with some people (and website Downdetector) reporting other affected apps include Soundcloud, Pinterest, Venmo, and perhaps most egregiously for those in lockdown, Bumble and Tinder, with the latter set to launch in-app video calling soon.
The problem doesn't appear to be affecting Android users, which probably has them gloating even more than usual. We've reached out to Apple for comment, but at the moment it's unclear what's causing the problem or why it's affecting so many different apps.
As is to be expected when there's a crisis, Twitter users have been bringing the good when it comes to theories, though, including that the reason for the outage is Grimes and Elon Musk's newborn taking revenge for the smack-talk the internet's been offering up about their unusual name.
How will people listen to music now and then create dances based on them and share them with the world? It truly is the end times. If people get really desperate they can always turn to Instagram's ever-more-TikTok-like IGTV... assuming it's working, that is.
App outages aren't anything new, but what's unusual here is the scope and scale of the problem. The Verge reports the problem is likely due to a change to Facebook's software development kit (SDK) that's affecting even those users who don't use Facebook to sign into the affected apps. A number of developers have been reporting problems with the SDK on Github. We've reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this story accordingly when we get a response.
UPDATE: As of 8:30 p.m. EST the affected apps appear to be working again.