No, you’re not having an identity crisis – there could be strangers in your iCloud photos
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Users of the iCloud for Windows app are reporting some rather bizarre glitches with photo and video content when accessing the platform on a PC.
Numerous complaints about the MacRumours forum (opens in new tab) details users’ alleged experiences with strangers’ photos and even videos appearing in their library in the iCloud app for Windows. Also, videos apparently shot with the iPhone 13 Pro and 14 Pro exhibit glitches when synced to the platform, leaving only blank screens and scan lines.
The problem seems isolated to Windows machines, and specifically with the iCloud for Windows app, not the recent ones iCloud Photos integration with Windows 11. It also appears to be a problem related to Apple’s servers rather than a problem on Microsoft’s side.
Under certain circumstances
There is plenty of speculation about what caused the problem and how. Apparently, incidents of iCloud for Windows are affected on both Windows 10 and 11, but only certain devices can cause the problem, such as devices with HDR and HEVC options enabled, indicating a display issue.
The complaints mainly come from users of the latest iPhone 13 Pro and 14 Pro. One of the more bizarre incidents recounted by the original poster on the MacRumors forum was the apparent insertion of other users’ photos into frames of their own video. It wasn’t until they downloaded the video from the iCloud app to their PC that the glitch occurred.
The user claims that they were able to reproduce this issue on three different machines, one running Windows 10 Pro and the other two running Windows 11 Pro. The video in question was filmed on an iPhone Pro 14 Max with HDR and HEVC enabled, but they reported no issues with videos from an iPhone 13 Pro Max. However, other users had the same bug with this model.
The issue has yet to be officially confirmed, although many users have already reported the issue to Apple.