Many Apple users have started complaining about experiencing serious issues with the iCloud for Windows app, particularly in regard to photo and video storage.
For those unaware, the iCloud for Windows app allows you to access your photos, videos, mail, calendar, files, and other important information on your Windows PC.
While some Apple users complained that iCloud for Windows is corrupting certain videos during the transfer, some reported photos and videos from complete strangers showing up in their iCloud Photo library.
Based on the online complaints from affected users on the MacRumors forum, videos taken with the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro models are not getting properly synced with iCloud for Windows.
When certain videos are recorded from iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro models and synced with iCloud for Windows, they turn “black with scan lines, rendering the videos unwatchable”, suggesting the content may have been corrupted.
What is more troubling is that when these users attempt to watch these corrupted videos, they are seeing photos and even videos they do not recognize appearing in their Photo Library.
For instance, users have seen random families, someone’s daughter in PJs, kids, soccer games, rubble, and other similar photo content.
“iCloud for Windows is corrupting videos recorded from an iPhone 14 pro max resulting in black videos with scan lines. On rare occasions, it is inserting stills into videos from unknown sources, possibly other’s iCloud accounts. I’ve been seeing photos of other people’s families I’ve never seen in my life, soccer games, and other random photos. Obviously, this is extremely concerning and does not exactly make me feel safe using iCloud,” explained MacRumors reader sleeping_ghost.
“I made a new account just to post about this. I am facing the exact same problem. This seems to be a recent issue as well as I have always kept the same videos synced and working. I recently re-installed iCloud for Windows from the Store and started syncing again and got the problem.
“I am running Windows 11 Home on my PC and my phone is iPhone 13 Pro. Also for me all my videos seems to have this issue,” wrote another MacRumors user Sribeno.
Since the problem is being reported by any iCloud user on Windows, it appears that it’s likely a server-side issue from Apple, rather than something on Microsoft’s side. Reports suggest seems that the problem could be when some particular files are being handed between the iPhone and iCloud rendering on Windows.
Currently, it is unclear if the photos or videos are from other people’s iCloud libraries, but there are speculations that it could be possible.
Several people have reported the issue to Apple and we are hoping they fix the issue with a software update for iCloud users as soon as possible.
