Hello,
I am unable to create a child Apple Account in System Settings > Family on my Mac. The process always gets stuck at the two-factor authentication step.
Environment
- macOS 27.2
- Mac model: MacBook Pro 14", M5
- I am the Family Sharing organizer
- I do not own an iPhone or iPad, so the Mac is my only Apple device
Steps to reproduce
1. System Settings > Family > Add Member > Create Child Account
2. Fill in the child's details and sign in with my Apple Account
3. Enter the 6-digit verification code when prompted
Actual result
After entering the code, nothing happens. The verification dialog stays open indefinitely, and the "Didn't get a verification code?" link cannot be clicked. The dialog appears frozen and never continues to the next step.
Expected result
The code is accepted and the child account setup continues.
Diagnostics
I captured logs with:
log stream --predicate 'process == "akd" OR process == "familycircled"'
The logs indicate that authentication actually succeeds on the server side, and the failure happens locally when akd tries to return the result to the System Settings client process:
14:07:09 akd: User wants a new Apple ID to auth with... / BEGIN CreateNewAppleID
14:07:09 akd: Failed fetching phone information for server UI delegate:
Error Domain=AKAuthenticationError Code=-7027
14:07:47 akd: Successful SRP!
14:07:48 akd: Fetching tokens for service IDs <private> succeeded!
14:07:48 akd: Dismiss basic login UI completed with response: success (called twice)
14:07:48 akd: Something bad happened! Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097
14:07:48 akd: [com.apple.xpc:connection] invalidated because the client process
(pid 3933) either cancelled the connection or exited
NSCocoaErrorDomain 4097 corresponds to NSXPCConnectionInterrupted. The client process (pid 3933) did not crash, because it kept opening new connections to akd after this error. It appears to release the XPC connection prematurely, possibly a race condition after the login UI is dismissed twice. As a result, the authentication result never reaches the setup flow, and the UI hangs.
Troubleshooting already performed
- [Restarted the Mac]
- [Ran "killall akd" and retried]
- [Verified date/time is set automatically]
- [Verified a valid payment method is on file]
- [Disabled VPN / firewall / DNS filtering]
The issue persists in all cases.
Request
Since I do not have an iPhone or iPad, I cannot use the iOS setup flow as a workaround. Could you please help me create the child account from your side, or escalate this as a macOS 27.2 bug to engineering?
I can provide the full log file on request.
Thank you