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It’s not just you: ‘Unable to check for update’ error is plaguing some iPhone and iPad users

Published Aug 9th, 2023 9:07AM EDT
unable to check for update iPhone and iPad
Image: José Adorno for BGR

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Over the past 24 hours, users have been complaining online about an error that doesn’t let them check for software updates on iPhones and iPad. This issue isn’t limited to those testing the latest iOS 17 beta version, as even users running stable iOS and iPadOS versions are experiencing the same problem.

On Threads, Giorgio wrote me that both his iPhone and iPad devices couldn’t check for updates. The error reads: “Unable to Check for update. Checking for a software update failed because you are not connected to the internet.”

A few X (formerly Twitter) users also reported that in the past 20 hours. For BGR staff, people running the stable versions and betas suffered from the same issue. Due to this bug, I couldn’t download watchOS 10 beta 5, and I had to reboot the iPhone and Apple Watch twice.

Some users report that even rebooting their devices didn’t work so they couldn’t check for the latest version update on their iPhone or iPad.

On the Apple System Status page, several issues have been marked as “Resolved,” most of them related to iCloud. However, being unable to check for updates might be a related bug to this outage experienced yesterday.

BGR contacted Apple but still hasn’t heard back about this issue.

What to do if your iPhone or iPad is unable to check for an update?

If this is a server-side error, there isn’t much you can do except wait. Since the latest software releases were all beta versions, mainly developers are experiencing this issue. If you are running a stable version and are planning to update to iOS 16.6, for example, you might need to wait a little longer.

A workaround could be rebooting your iPhone and iPad or connecting/disconnecting from Wi-Fi to see if your device can find the latest software update.

When Apple resolves this issue, we’ll update the story to inform you about this bug fix.

José Adorno Tech News Reporter

José is a Tech News Reporter at BGR. He has previously covered Apple and iPhone news for 9to5Mac, and was a producer and web editor for Latin America broadcaster TV Globo. He is based out of Brazil.