On Thursday, Apple's popular iMessage service experienced a rare and widespread outage, leaving users across the globe unable to send or receive messages. The disruption began around 5:40 p.m. EST, with reports of issues quickly flooding in from frustrated users.
The outage reached its peak shortly after 6 p.m. EST, according to Downdetector, a service that tracks digital service disruptions. Users reported delays in message delivery and complete failures in sending messages. Fortunately, by 7:30 p.m. EST, the issue had largely been resolved.
Apple's system status page confirmed the outage, noting that the problem persisted from 5:49 p.m. to 6:35 p.m. EST. The page has since been updated to indicate that the service is now operating normally.
This incident highlights the heavy reliance on iMessage, which processes millions of messages per second, and the immediate impact of any disruptions to the service.
