Can't enable icloud Drive On iPhone 11

Hi, I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max running iOS 13.4. My carrier is T-Mobile. When I go into the Files app, I’m presented with a big blue button that says "Turn on iCloud Drive."


When I press that button, it takes me to the iCloud panel in Settings. In that panel is a switch to turn on iCloud drive. When I flip the switch on and it turns green, it opens up a screen that says "Upgrade to iCloud Drive."


The problem is that the actual "Upgrade" button doesn't do anything when pressed, and neither does the "Cancel" button. They are also overlapping each other.


I am now stuck and unable to activate or access my iCloud Drive. Has anyone else experienced this issue? Any help would be appreciated. I have enclosed a screenshot of the three screens in question:Thank you!

iPhone 11 Pro Max, iOS 13

Posted on Mar 30, 2020 1:26 AM

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Posted on May 30, 2020 8:55 AM

Agreed,

logging on a windows browser may or may not have helped for me.

iCloud Drive didn’t start working when I logged in from a windows machine.


I then realised it might be a payment acknowledgment issue. Something on Apple’s end wasn’t satisfying the “have paid for” iCloud Drive setting, so the Apple device cannot turn iCloud Drive on.


so, go into settings, your AppleID, click into payments and shipping. iCloud Drive started working on the Apple device. Repeated the steps on the other Apple device, it also started working,


Suspect it is a glitch between handling an iCloud Drive upgrade payment setting to “paid” that doesn’t quite sync right.

No need for factory reset!


hope that helps!

84 replies

May 1, 2020 4:33 AM in response to bushra28

I feel your pain! I recently came over to Apple from Android, which has been mostly a good experience but frustrating and disappointing as well.


The good is that my iPhone 11 Pro Max is a gorgeous, unbelievably fluid, blazingly fast device that is, without a doubt, the nicest phone I’ve ever owned. As they say, it’s like buttah!


The bad is Apple itself, a company I feel often punishes its loyal customers with arrogance and indifference. With Android, which I was with for over a decade, they seem to go out of their way to give their customers options, to give them the ability to customize things in a way that makes the user experience much more fulfilling and complete.


Apple, on the other hand, seems to think every random idea they have is a perfect one, every strange decision they make is what the customer needs. And the way they force developers to hobble some of the functionality of their apps is apalling; all it does is take away from the user experience.


I get that Apple is a tightly closed and controlled ecosystem, while Android is open source. That’s no reason to be so draconian when it comes to giving the very people who buy your products the ability to have a choice. If I want to change the color of iMessages, or have a widget on my home screen, or make Gmail my default provider, that shouldn’t be a problem. But it is. And it gets old fast.


So, I totally get where you’re coming from. I really want to love the Apple ecosystem--I had even been considering getting an Apple Watch and an iPad--but seeing how inhospitable that ecosystem is to change or customization gives me pause.

May 1, 2020 9:17 AM in response to Nightflyre9

Thanks for the useful insights everyone. This is definitely eye opener as I trusted to go for Apple after a decade of using Android phones. Android phones are indeed much more easy to maintain/customise I feel.


Having said that, to have to factory reset just to enable this setting back feels barbaric. I appreciate your efforts and the time you've taken to share with the community (you are not wrong anywhere) :). It's just that the Apple team should acknowledge this UI Bug and fix it in the next release. I cannot factory reset as my whatsapp is not backed up and I cannot loose the chats. There needs to be some or the other workaround until this is fixed. I tried to do it on my iPad pro 10.5" but the same error pops up there as well.


I do not want to jump to any conclusions but in my 2 months of using this, I'm doubting this purchase sooner than I anticipated. I'm not saying the phone is not good, it definitely is Amazingly fast and has an impeccable hardware; its just these annoying software glitches that are hindering the experience which you won't bother much on Android due to the cost differences.


Hope there is something else that I can try.

Jul 1, 2020 1:42 PM in response to Nightflyre9

I hope someone else can shed some more light on this; I reset and restored my iPad from an iCloud backup, but when it was finally back up and running, the same thing happened, and I just don't understand. The iCloud Drive Windows app seems to be working just fine, but whenever I try to access iCloud Drive in a browser, I get an error message ("iCloud Drive has stopped responding"). And the problem with iCloud Drive on the iPad is exactly as described by the OP

Jul 13, 2020 7:08 PM in response to Nightflyre9

Hi, if I wanted to do a hard reset like you have suggested would my WhatsApp chats be backed up from the last backup I did on my computer yesterday? The issue I’m having is I need to back up WhatsApp but it won’t let me because I cloud drive will not either turn on or stay on and I’m having the same issue as the author. If I do a hard reset would it still have my WhatsApp chats when I restore it from the computer backup? Thanks in advance.

Jul 18, 2020 12:23 AM in response to nikil1980

Hi, are you using a Windows computer? I just accessed iCloud from my Windows laptop and you can see the icons presented on the home page. You want "Pages." It’s on the bottom left.


I haven’t actually had to use this method myself, so I don't know the exact sequence of steps, but it should be pretty self-explanatory once you’re in "Pages." Try again and see if it works. If not, try browsing Jfkladsjo's responses in this thread. Or you could Google it. Good luck!


Dec 13, 2020 1:00 AM in response to Nightflyre9

Hi. Same issue for me. I have 4 devices in front of me now with this exact bug. All up to date. All restarted. Stuck on the same screen where the buttons don't work. Hard reset is not an option or I risk losing all the pictures & chat messages.

I can't believe this bug hasn't been adressed. I can't transfer my WhatsApp messages from my old to new phone because of this bug!

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Can't enable icloud Drive On iPhone 11

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