Set up iCloud Private Relay on all your devices (2024)

FAQs

Set up iCloud Private Relay on all your devices? ›

iCloud Private Relay is designed to protect your privacy by ensuring that when you browse the web in Safari, no single party — not even Apple — can see both who you are and what sites you're visiting. When Private Relay is enabled, your requests are sent through two separate, secure internet relays.

iCloud Private Relay is designed to protect your privacy by ensuring that when you browse the web in Safari, no single party — not even Apple — can see both who you are and what sites you're visiting. When Private Relay is enabled, your requests are sent through two separate, secure internet relays.

The Apple Private Relay feature can slow your internet speed slightly. That is because it uses encryption to hide your web requests from your ISP and third parties.

Which Apple devices support iCloud Private Relay? iCloud Private Relay is available to users with an iCloud+ subscription on iPhone and iPad running iOS 15 or later, Mac running macOS Monterey or later, and Apple TV 4K with tvOS 15 or later.

If you turn off Private Relay, network providers and websites can monitor your internet activity in Safari. If you travel somewhere that Private Relay isn't available, it will automatically turn off and will turn on again when you re-enter a country or region that supports it.

Private Relay is an Apple device-only service.

If you own an iPhone, iPad or Mac, after subscribing to iCloud+, you can find the toggle to turn on Private Relay within your iCloud settings. So no, it is not available on either Android or Windows.

Users can choose which server they want to use and the location of the server. Users have more control over the servers they want to use. In a nutshell, Private Relays enhance your privacy only within the Apple ecosystem, whereas VPNs offer a more enhanced security experience.

When you subscribe to iCloud+, you can use iCloud Private Relay on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac to hide your IP address and browsing activity in Safari and protect your unencrypted internet traffic.

What Does iCloud Private Relay Do? iCloud Private Relay keeps your internet activity private by hiding your IP address from the websites you visit.

Does iCloud Private Relay keep logs? ›

Private Relay's design, combined with a minimal logging policy, ensures that proxy logs do not contain enough information to connect a user's IP address or account information with their browsing activity.

Similar to when using VPN, the speed of access to websites and services may be slower when using iCloud Private Relay.

With iCloud Private Relay, users with an iPhone, iPad, or Mac and an iCloud+ subscription can connect to and browse the internet and in a more secure and private way using Safari. You can enable Private Relay in iCloud Settings on devices running iOS 15, iPadOS 15, or macOS Monterey.

iCloud Private Relay: Yes

The better VPNs, such as NordVPN, Surfshark, and ExpressVPN, have their own servers to resolve DNS queries. This prevents third-party network intruders and ISPs from being able to see which websites users are visiting. iCloud Privacy Relay also keeps your DNS queries private.

Trust Private Relay connections

Private Relay enforces several anti-abuse and anti-fraud techniques, such as single-use authentication tokens and rate limiting. This is designed to ensure that only valid Apple devices and accounts in good standing are allowed to use Private Relay.

As a result, Private Relay protects all web browsing in Safari and unencrypted activity in apps, adding both privacy and security benefits. Private Relay is included with any iCloud+ subscription. This gives Apple device owners an easy way to meaningfully improve their privacy when browsing the internet.

Private Relay works similarly to a VPN, in the sense that it conceals your real IP address and encrypts your internet traffic, but there are plenty of security and privacy features missing that a VPN for iPhone or VPN for Mac would provide. Apple Private Relay can be used in conjunction with a VPN.

We show that iCloud Private Relay not only reduces speed test perfor- mance (up to 10x decrease) but also negatively affects page load time and download/upload throughput in different scenarios.