Apple’s App Store and iTunes Store down for many users worldwide [Update: They’re back!]

Apple’s App Store seems to be suffering from a fault that is preventing many users from downloading apps and music. Some people are also reporting issues accessing the Mac App Store.

Apple’s official status checker isn’t yet reporting problems, but plenty of Twitter users are complaining of problems, and downdetector is showing widespread outages.

While some people can still access the store via iOS devices, searching for content returns no results and trying to download apps that you can see results in an error.

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Problems in downloading content don’t seem to be limited to a particular OS either – both Windows and Mac users have reported difficulties.

The problem appeared to first start around 15:00GMT/11:00EST. We’ve contacted Apple about the problem and will update when we have more details.

Apple’s last widespread outage was earlier this month and lasted around 13 hours.

Let us know in the comments below if you’re having problems accessing either store and where in the world you are located.

Update 15:45GMT/11:45ET: We’re hearing that many people can once again access the stores now, and our own testing confirms that access has been restored for some people. While probably a bit of an inconvenience, at least this downtime only lasted a little under an hour.