iCloud keeps signing in after I sign out

Question

iCloud always... ALWAYS crash all my apps (Pages, Keynote, SimpleText, etc) that use iCloud so if I turn off iCloud, the apps run fine. Apps just cannot open documents at all.

Here's what's getting my goat: I signed off iCloud in System Preference on Mac OSX Mountain Lion but every time I open the System Preference, it shows that it's already signed in! That's how I know apps aren't working if I use them again in few minutes. Something is wrong. I have to keep signing out every time I open System Preferences.

I want to totally disable iCloud and removed from MacOSX if possible. I don't want photosteam, I don't want data shared in the cloud.

Answer 1

Rather than fuss with each of the settings within iCloud, you might want to delete the entire account using System Preferences:

1. Open Mail, Contacts & Calendars and delete all iCloud accounts.
2. Open iCloud Preference Pane and press Sign Out

The first step won't delete anything that's already stored in the cloud, only items on the local computer. The second step will also only delete local content and erase any of the certificates, keys and other things that tie a computer to iCloud servers. At that point, I would reboot and then check your Mac for other issues (disk utility to check the disk catalog once you boot into Recovery HD) and then decide if things are stable again.

Specifically, you might have corruption in the preference file that stores iCloud log in credentials. You can test this by making a new account on the Mac and then signing in and out of the same iCloud account.

That will isolate the error to either your iCloud account (meaning you contact Apple support to get the account cleared up) or the error is the user account on the Mac (meaning you back up the Mac and set that user up / restore the files that are not corrupted).

Answer 2

Repair permissions just didn't work - it keeps going on and on... it seems like it froze. Apparently, there's some issues with permissions. I had to get a different drive and reinstall MacOSX... and even with that, the Migration Assistant didn't work - it couldn't migrate apps. So, I had to re-download all apps.

I am happy to report that I am STILL able to get user data from the original drive and instead of using my local hard drive with slow transfer rate, I got an external SSD drive to work as a boot drive and it works.. fast!

Answer 3

Are you using multiple accounts on the Mac? Two accounts will fight with one another, especially if both are registered to one Apple ID.

If so, I'd suggest

1) Disconnecting from the internet/wifi entirely to ensure synced prefs aren't causing this 2) Sign out of iCloud entirely on both (or all) accounts 3) Restart the Mac 4) Log into the individual accounts i.e. log into one, check iCloud is still "Signed Out", log out, then the others, repeat 5) Reconnect back to the internet and do a final reboot for good measure

Hopefully that will help.

It's a bit round-about, but iCloud is pretty persistent when it comes to it's settings when there's multiple accounts!

edit

Another thing that comes to mind is the password.

When you set up a user account, you get to choose your own username/password or use your iCloud account. If the latter, you won't have much of a choice until you change your login details to something other than iCloud.

Answer 4

Turn off/delete all iCloud services/accounts.

Trash the entire contents of Macintosh HD/library/caches and Your_Username/Library/Caches (may have to enable the 'Show Library Folder' option in finder view options when looking at your user folder)

Empty the Trash - if it doesn't allow you to, reboot, then empty trash.
Reboot again