Apple has confirmed it has fixed a bug that was preventing a large number of apps from being launched.
The strange issue, which emerged over a week ago, issued iPhone owners with a pop-up message informing them: “This app is no longer shared with you.”
The pop-up instructed device owners in order to use the app they must buy it from the App Store. It was particularly weird given many of the apps affected were free, rather than paid apps.
According to reports, dozens of apps were affected, including high-profile tools like WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. The only solution was to offload and reinstall the application for each of the apps stricken by the issue.
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Apple now says the issue is fixed for all affected customers, but didn’t go into detail on what had caused it (via TechCrunch). However, it is widely thought the issue pertained to the company’s Family Sharing feature, which enables linked Apple ID accounts to share access to paid apps.
Usually, the ‘not shared with you’ message would appear if the iOS user had been removed from the family unit within iCloud. 9to5Mac was among the first sites to suggest this issue was potentially down to a signing issue that caused the apps to behave so strangely.
Apple pushed updates for the affected apps, which resulted in many iPhone users seeing a wide array of updates waiting for them over the weekend. Those updates, which contained no new content, are likely to have re-signed the necessary certificates in order to get things up and running again.
Apple’s lack of comment doesn’t assist the developers, who may have incurred the wrath of app users as a result of the launch failures over the last few days.
Were you hit by the Family Sharing app bug? Let us know @trustedreviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.