Microsoft’s Your Phone App Is Down (Update: It’s back)

Update: After nearly a 19 hour long outage, Microsoft tells me the Your Phone is back up now.  Original story follows below.

Microsoft’s Your Phone app is currently down. Users of the app have been unable to connect to their phone via the app due to what seems to be a backend issue.

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Microsoft’s service portal started reporting problems as early as 7AM GMT today. That means the Your Phone app has been suffering from connection issues for almost 14 hours.

“We’ve identified an issue causing connection problems for the Your Phone app. Users may receive “Can’t connect” or other error banners when using the app. We’re actively investigating to identify the cause of the problem and develop a remediation plan,” Microsoft said.

The issue comes just days after Microsoft launched its massive integration with the new Samsung Note 10, where Your Phone comes natively integrated into the device. It’s not clear if the Note 10’s launch demand has led to this outage, though.

This also seems to be a backend issue for the service, so at least it’s not something to do with the app itself as you’d have to wait for an app update from Microsoft to fix the issue. So once the servers are fixed, Your Phone should be back up soon. Either way, it may be a little disappointing for new and existing Your Phone users. We will let you know when the service is back up, though.

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Conversation 23 comments

  • untitled1

    26 August, 2019 - 3:18 pm

    <p>I've been having issues with it for days, it stopped working Thursday or Friday.</p>

  • wolters

    Premium Member
    26 August, 2019 - 3:35 pm

    <p>My review unit of my Note 10 came Thursday and YourPhone has worked well until today. The timing couldn't be worse…wonder if it has anything to do with new Note 10 users actually taking advantage of this. </p>

    • rmlounsbury

      Premium Member
      26 August, 2019 - 5:20 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451869">In reply to wolters:</a></em></blockquote><p>On one hand you hope that this is true (Note 10 users jumping on the YourPhone bandwagon). On the other hand it has been published there are about 1.3 million pre-orders so even if everyone used YourPhone that shouldn't impact their ability to handle YourPhone volume. The worst part is that I'd imagine that YourPhone adoption is probably 50% or less of that number. </p><p><br></p><p>No matter how you slice it; this isn't a good look for Microsoft which has come out and said the best MS experience on Android is the Note 10 and have YourPhone die shortly after launch of that service for damn near an entire day at that. </p>

  • nbplopes

    26 August, 2019 - 5:26 pm

    <p>Why does this need to connect to the Cloud to connect to the phone centimeters away blows my mind. It’s just crap engineering. </p>

    • Winner

      26 August, 2019 - 6:28 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451894">In reply to nbplopes:</a></em></blockquote><p>This isn't the only backend problem that they have!</p>

    • sevenacids

      26 August, 2019 - 7:08 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451894">In reply to nbplopes:</a></em></blockquote><p>Nope, I guess it's intentional. I'm sure they want to track and analyze your activity, so they need the cloud-in-the-middle.</p>

    • PeteB

      27 August, 2019 - 1:26 am

      <blockquote><a href="#451894"><em>In reply to nbplopes:</em></a><em> </em>Why does this need to connect to the Cloud</blockquote><p>Because it's just a data collection trojan that they're trying to back in to Android since their own mobile platform was DOA.</p>

    • kcorax

      27 August, 2019 - 8:18 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451894">In reply to nbplopes:</a></em></blockquote><p>I guess it's for the same reason that dropbox can't sync peer to peer on the same lan. Your Phone no longer assumes that you're on the same network. That made it useless for me at work as I jumped between wifi spots. The phone can be on 4g, the pc on ethernet and it will still work. As it should. And of course this requires a back end sync service.</p>

      • nbplopes

        27 August, 2019 - 10:04 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#451997">In reply to kcorax:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Probably. So why do we need the Your Phone App really? to send my SMSs to Microsoft?</p><p><br></p>

    • Tony Barrett

      27 August, 2019 - 8:24 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451894">In reply to nbplopes:</a></em></blockquote><p>Agree 100%. Surely this is a private connection between the phone and PC. If there is a backend that's required, who knows what and how much data is being syphoned off. Messages, contacts, phone history – all potentially being sent to MS. Microsoft only made an announcement about the app – nothing about the rest of it.</p>

    • codymesh

      28 August, 2019 - 4:27 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451894">In reply to nbplopes:</a></em></blockquote><p>most software these days is crap engineering just like this, in the name of "security" and "ecosystem". It's infuriating.</p>

  • MikeGalos

    26 August, 2019 - 10:36 pm

    <p>Wow. Nice coverage.</p><p><br></p><p>I assume we'll see a front-page headline story every time any vendor has a feature offline for a few hours now as part of the site's policies. </p><p><br></p><p>Useful.</p>

    • PeteB

      27 August, 2019 - 1:25 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451924">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>Found the closet MS employee </p>

      • nbplopes

        28 August, 2019 - 11:39 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#451933">In reply to PeteB:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>And that becomes one of the problems of MS these days. </p>

    • codymesh

      28 August, 2019 - 4:12 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451924">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>this ain't it chief </p>

    • ragingthunder

      29 August, 2019 - 9:13 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#451924">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>Totally agree with you. This site is recently getting filled with these silly articles.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    27 August, 2019 - 3:35 am

    <p>I thought Your Phone was a local app running on PC and phone and connecting them either by Wi-Fi or Bluetooth? </p><p><br></p><p>Why does it need a cloud service, and what information is going over the cloud hub?</p>

  • justme

    Premium Member
    27 August, 2019 - 3:37 am

    <p>I dont use the app. My own phone is an IPhone 6SPlus, and apart from backing it up from time to time via ITunes, dont generally associate my phone with my computer. I will admit however that I am curious – why would the Your Phone app need to contact the cloud in order to connect to your phone? I can see where syncing of data might not work if there was a backend problem, but not connecting altogether.</p>

  • Thom77

    27 August, 2019 - 8:42 am

    <p>Hun….. the oven doesnt work. Check the internet …</p>

  • roykirk

    27 August, 2019 - 12:37 pm

    <p>Still hasn't worked for me on my Note 10+, even after the service was reported as available again. Phone shows up in the Your Phone app on my laptop, says it's connected on my phone notification bar, but in the Your Phone app it says it needs permission to sync notifications with my phone, which I've already provided via the phone. Kind of stuck with a useless feature right now. Worked way better on my Note 8 when it was an actual separate, downloadable app for the phone, not this integrated beast over which I have almost no control.</p>

  • MityK

    Premium Member
    27 August, 2019 - 1:45 pm

    <p>Why on earth it need the cloud for these? What data they transfer to the cloud. I'm removing the app untill they clarify it.</p>

  • evillama

    28 August, 2019 - 4:58 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Notifications not syncing again (4:30pm EDT). Is the outage back? Should note that Photos and Messages still seem to work, but the same error as before is popping up. Chatting with MS Support now…</span></p>

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