Apple Announces iCloud+, Combines Paid Storage With Privacy Features Like Hide My Email

At WWDC, Apple announced that iCloud is getting a premium subscription tier called "‌iCloud‌+," which includes "Private Relay" that allows users to browse the web through Safari with all information leaving their device remaining encrypted and access to "Hide My Email."

f1623088657
One of the headlining features for ‌iCloud‌+ is Private Relay, which, similarly to a VPN, ensures that all traffic leaving a device is fully encrypted, so no third party between the website and device can see the website being viewed.

Private Relay is a new internet privacy service that’s built right into iCloud, allowing users to connect to and browse the web in a more secure and private way. When browsing with Safari, Private Relay ensures all traffic leaving a user’s device is encrypted, so no one between the user and the website they are visiting can access and read it, not even Apple or the user’s network provider. All the user’s requests are then sent through two separate internet relays. The first assigns the user an anonymous IP address that maps to their region but not their actual location. The second decrypts the web address they want to visit and forwards them to their destination. This separation of information protects the user’s privacy because no single entity can identify both who a user is and which sites they visit.

Also part of ‌iCloud‌+ is Hide My Email, which builds on the idea of Sign in With Apple by providing users a random email address that forwards to their personal email. Users can use Hide My Email directly in Safari, ‌iCloud‌ settings, and more.
Apple iPhone12Pro mail new message hide my email 060721 carousel

Expanding on the capabilities of Sign in with Apple, Hide My Email lets users share unique, random email addresses that forward to their personal inbox anytime they wish to keep their personal email address private. Built directly into Safari, iCloud settings, and Mail, Hide My Email also enables users to create and delete as many addresses as needed at any time, helping give users control of who is able to contact them.

The last feature part of ‌iCloud‌+ is support for HomeKit Secure Video, which provides end-to-end encryption for home security footage that won't count against a user's ‌iCloud‌ storage space.

iCloud+ expands built-in support for HomeKit Secure Video, so users can connect more cameras than ever before in the Home app, while giving them end-to-end encrypted storage for home security video footage that will not count against their storage capacity. HomeKit Secure Video also ensures that activity detected by users’ security cameras is analyzed and encrypted by their Apple devices at home before being securely stored in iCloud.

‌iCloud‌+ will be offered to ‌iCloud‌ users at no additional cost, starting as normal with 50GB of storage for $0.99 per month, with the ability to add one ‌HomeKit Secure Video‌ Camera and up to 2TB of storage with unlimited secure video cameras for $9.99 per month.

Related Roundup: WWDC 2024
Tag: iCloud

Top Rated Comments

Crazy Badger Avatar
38 months ago
Have they worked out how to combine my two Apple IDs into one yet? I have an Apple ID used to buy music and then Apps on an iPod and then a @me.com one when that was launched. It's always been inconvenient, but as more are more gets tied into iCloud, having two Apple IDs is a real pain. Why can't I migrate the purchases on my original Apple ID onto my @me.com/icloud.com ID?
Score: 43 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nvmls Avatar
38 months ago
First two tiers, free 5GB & 50GB one are still a joke.
50gb should be the free one and 200GB and up paid.
Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Channan Avatar
38 months ago

First two tiers, free 5GB & 50GB one are still a joke.
50gb should be the free one and 200GB and up paid.
$1/month for 50GB with the new iCloud+ features is honestly a really good deal. I’m not complaining.
Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
JPack Avatar
38 months ago

Was REALLY hoping they would at least up the storage space. Even if I had to pay more. With the whole family taking photo and shooting in 4K. Even at 4gb (max offered) isn’t going to hold out for much longer.
At this point, I think most people are glad Apple hasn't remove the free 5GB tier, for "environmental" reasons like they did with the charger.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
adammusic Avatar
38 months ago
Why call it plus and not just include it in regular icloud.
If theres no extra charge why plus it
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
munpip214 Avatar
38 months ago
Not sure why they had to rename it
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...