Apple’s iCloud services — quick URLs and future improvements?
I’ve been getting my iCloud.com groove on lately and enjoyed it immensely.
Being able to hold a lecture straight from Keynote on the iCloud on a browser was an eye-opener. No longer do I first create a Keynote on my 1st Generation iPad and then send it out to my computer as either a Keynote file or a Powerpoint file, I’ll just edit the whole thing on a browser and show it on the browser too. Nice!
Being a big big fan of Reminders and Notes, I was extremely entertained by discovering a few interesting bits about subdomains (I think that’s the term?) under the iCloud.com domain.
What Apple have already done
If you want to go straight to Reminders (while having already logged onto iCloud with your AppleID), just go here:
Yep, this transports you directly to https://www.icloud.com/#reminders .
If you were to want to read your iCloud email (while logged onto iCloud), just go here:
Great! You are, indeed, transported directly to https://www.icloud.com/#mail
Perhaps you have a Calendar update you’re itching to go to. Yep, you guessed it:
Will take you to https://www.icloud.com/#calendar
Maybe you’re an iCloud Drive kinda guy? Well,
http://iclouddrive.icloud.com will take you to https://www.icloud.com/#iclouddrive .. And since Apple are into their details, http://drive.icloud.com will take you there too.
Find My iPhone obviously works with http://find.icloud.com auto-mapped to https://www.icloud.com/#find — and with an additional password request before showing the details, even if you are logged onto iCloud on your browser.
One more.. Photos. http://photos.icloud.com will boot you to https://icloud.com/#photos
So, what’s missing? Where could Apple improve with these shortlinks for iCloud -services?
Well, obviously add the rest, right? So, here is the state (16th March 2016 (updated for 27th March 2023)) of the rest of them.
Find My Friends: http://fmf.icloud.com -> No resource at this location
Contacts: http://contacts.icloud.com -> Bad Request
(Scroll down for updates) And a total of five “Page not reachable, no DNS configured”-errors for keynote.icloud.com, pages.icloud.com, numbers.icloud.com, settings.icloud.com and findmyfriends.icloud.com.
What this really means is that it is “just” a case of some DNS configuration changes at the Apple HQ and these become a functioning reality. While I make no pretense of knowing how things are done over at Apple HQ, I hope that this is a low-hanging fruit enough to be implemented this year!
Now.. That was all, right? Nope. If you are at all familiar with your iCloud services, you’ll notice that I neglected to mention Notes.
Is there a good reason to leave that for the last? Yep! While http://notes.icloud.com does connect to something, you are taken to https://www.icloud.com/# . So, Notes is 50% there. Almost!
Update (28.03.2017): http://notes.icloud.com nowadays connects to https://www.icloud.com/#notes and then redirects to https://www.icloud.com/#notes2. But pages,numbers,settings,keynote,findmyfriends/fmf still do nothing.
Update (06.11.2018): pages, numbers, keynote now work the way they’re supposed to. So glad for this! So check this out:
http://keynote.icloud.com
http://pages.icloud.com
http://numbers.icloud.com
fmf.icloud.com, contacts.icloud.com and settings.icloud.com still shoot errors, though.
UPDATE: As of 27th March 2023 — contacts and settings also work.
TL;DR: Apple supports x.icloud.com directly off the bat with reminders, notes, mail, calendar, photos, iclouddrive / drive, settings, contacts, keynote, pages, numbers and find.
There is currently (27th March 2023) no support for findmyfriends / fmf, — some of these are mere DNS configuration issues. Almost there, let’s hope Apple can add the missing ones to their growing list of meticulously thought-out and implemented details. :)
