This Mac can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with [email]

Didn't work for me, Only for the day I do it and then next day back to the ugly message again 😟

Seems that I finally found a solution in my case that I didn't find mentioned anywhere: I went to appleid.apple.com, changed my Apple ID password, and then reverified it on every Apple device (iOS and OS X). After a few minutes everything seems to be working fine again, no more "This Mac can't connect to iCloud..." popups. Hope it helps someone else, it was a very frustrating problem.

P.S. I think what trigger the problem in my case was that I logged out from iCloud on my Mac, and then logged in again but using my @icloud.com e-mail address instead of my Apple ID's primary email address (a @gmail.com e-mail address).

Problem is back again, now on my Macbook and Macbook Pro 😟

What I did was opening Keychain. Then I did a search for icloud and found like 5 or so entries. I deleted all of them and then logged in back to icloud via system preferences icloud. So far this works fine and I could see how keychain was restoring the deleted entries. No idea if this is sustainable.

I have the same issue on my MacBook Air (OS X 10.11.2) and iPhone 6s (iOS 9.2). Both devices keep asking for password. I changed the password on Apple ID website, also I removed entries in Keychain and I still have this problem. Apple, what's going on with you... I remember times when I could use my Mac for a year without any issue, today it's like one issue for a week...

I even did a clean install of OS X 10.11.2, and during the initial OS X setup I was able to login in iCloud but after a while I started to see again the "This Mac can't...." and worse, in iPhone and iPad mini (where I didn't make any changes) I started to see "Apple ID Verification. Enter the password for xxx@gmail.com in Settings" popup. So in Summary, I had to disable iCloud in my Mac (otherwise they're unusable, popup doesn't let me do anything at all) and iPhone/iPad are still in iCloud but I get this popup once in a while.

I also tried removing things in Keychain, but since a clean OS X install didn't work, I don't know if it's going to help.

Worst christmas ever.

Good news! I followed these instructions to solve the problem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7255773?answerId=29517113022#29517113022

Basically I manually unlocked the System Roots keychain using Keychain Access and then logged in iCloud using Internet Accounts preferences (not iCloud preferences, but I don't know if it makes any difference). I saw no error messages in iCloud preferences nor the "This Mac can't connect..." pop up window. I'll wait a day at least to make sure this actually worked.

THIS WORKED! I cannot thank you enough. I have spent all day trying to figure out how to get rid of it, and I am constantly on my computer for work so I kept having to enter it to view my E-Mail over and over and over again. Thank you so much!!!! 🙂

This message has become a fact of life for me. It suddenly started happening on every Mac I use (2 running Mavericks and 1 running El Capitan) in every user account. The "delete and reinstall" has not worked at all. Right now, in the account I'm using, there are nine entries for my icloud password in the keychain, leading me to suspect that it is not about icloud, but that the keychain itself is broken. The keychain is a pretty important OS component, if an update has ruined it permanently are we stuck with it? Also, do we even need icloud? Maybe it is time to look for alternatives?

Did you try following these instructions:

Re: El Capitan - This Mac can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with "name@email.com" - is occurring frequently with my new installation of the OS

They fixed the issue for me in December 2015. No more probkems since them in two machine running OS X El Capitan.

You said how we need to back everything up first. How would I back something up?

Fixed the issue for me as well! Thank you!

it seems that the problem was with login with iCloud password as it is removed in the the 10.11.4 update and it just fixed my problem

the problem was solved for me after logging in in iMessage and FaceTime , and none of the other solutions worked for me.

Regards

SOLUTION

FOR MAIL TRIGGERING THE ERROR MESSAGE: 'This mac can't connect to icloud because of a problem with <email address>'

Open Mail

Go to Preferences > Accounts

Click on iCloud account

Click on Advanced tab

Towards the bottom - make sure that it says 'Authentication: Apple Token'

I changed this, as mine wasn't set to Apple Token (previously TLS client certificate), and it has solved my problem of being repeatedly asked for my iCloud password when I open Mail.

I guess this setting gets lost when using iCloud to restore email accounts, as I had tried to do with a clean install of El Capitan.

Props to Ashton_Schmidt on the first page of this thread.

Re: This Mac can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with [email]