iPad Pro touch screen intermittent unresponsive

With respect to the Apple Pencil, my experience is that the touch screen issue is not effected by it. For example, if the touch screen is not responding to my finger swipe, I would pick up my Apple Pencil to perform a swipe and the touch screen would always seem to respond to the pencil.

so far iOS 13 beta has not helped the issue

besides using my iPad for productivity apps, I do play some pretty graphic intensive games - asphalt 9. and my experience leads me to believe that the game can lead to or exacerbate the touch screen issues...but nothing conclusive.

the issue seems to effect the side with the volume switches, Apple Pencil recharger the most (2018 12.9 iPad Pro).

Sometimes shifting my fingers around how I hold the iPad temporarily resolves it.

Disabling tap-to-wake has resolved this for me (5 days so far).

Also, since this is happening to a small minority here iPad Pro models across all 3 model years ( now over 1000 users affected ) this has to be something all 3 model years have in common.

If you are playing resource intense games, this builds up the heat inside of the iPad. The internal heat of the iPad gets worse if you are doing iPad resource intensive games whke connected to the charger and tbe iPad is struggling to charge up the Li-ion battery.

Heat coukd, also, be a cause making the touch screen issues worse.

For older iPad Pro models, there is no Tap to Wake function to turn on/off to temporarily fix/cure the touch screen issues.

So, this has to be some other issue related to functions and features that directly affect the operation of the touch screen for everyone affected.

Not everyone notices this issue depending on the use. For example, mine starts when playing mobile games on it. I believe the heat over time has affected internal components. If I don’t do any mobile gaming, the iPad has no issues. Any more intense application now causes that unresponsiveness. I have video proof of it not working on both pros. I believe it is in fact a defect causes my higher heat wearing down internal components. I think people noticed it during a specific iOS upgrade because it took that long for the component to deteriorate. I would compare it to an engine that has a recall that between 40k and 80k miles has seals that wear out. Everyone would notice it within 2 to 4 years. Either way, I would recommend Apple care for all the Pros if you plan on doing any intense applications that generate heat like gaming.

Turning tap to wake off and restarting it's gone away for me, but I'm at maybe an hour of use since that change and any change tends to make it go away for a while before coming back. I'll try to remember to update if it stays away for a few days.

The only way to get Apple to, DIRECTLY, listen to you is to use their feedback portion of their website.

iPad Feedback

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

Cognizant Apple employees read ALL feedback generated from all of the various feedback pages and transfers the data to the proper and responsible Apple teams and personnel , but NO Apple employees will ever respond with any type of direct, individual replies from the feedback you post.

The more users that post product feedback about any product issue, the faster Apple is made aware and starts working on a fix/solution for a future software update.

Also, you may want to phone contact Apple, directly in Cupertino, California, and calmly talk to an Apple customer service employee about this issue via the link below.

https://www.apple.com/contact/

There is nothing to be done from a user standpoint about this iisue.

There is no permanent or temporary solution for this iisue for older iPad Pro models.

I would call Apple customer support directly in their main headquarters in Cupertino, CA and calmly have a discussion with them regarding the unresponsive touch screen issues your iPad Pro has been experiencing.

Call them using the link below and see what they can do for you, if anything.

Contact - How to Contact Us - Apple

Best of Luck to You!

If you haven’t have this iPad Pro long , see if you can return this iPad Pro and get your money back.

Purchase a discounted, refurbished iPad Pro model from Apple with the option of getting extended AppleCare+, instead.

The person that sold you that iPad Pro may have known and had this issue, already and sold it because that person didn’t want to deal with this issue, any longer.

You may have been sold a problematic iPad.

FYI,

This touchscreen issue affects a growing random amount of iPad Pro users across all three model years.

There is no rhyme or reason to which iPad Pros over those three years gets hit with this unresponsive touch screen issue.

It seems to be completely random issue OR this issue maybe related to common app or apps that everyone has installed on their iPad Pros.

Hi,

I’ve been facing a similar issue for months, with iPad pro(12.9, first generation) becoming unresponsive to touch on some parts of the screen from time to time.

After resetting it, bringing it back to Apple who kindly proposed to take it back for 10% of the original price, I finally linked the issue to screen orientation.

Today, I simply ‘locked’ the screen orientation using the widget in the control center and not only touch is now working perfectly fine, but the device seems much faster and responsive.

I suspect a faulty orientation sensor, not enough to make the screen rotates by itself, but enough to hog the OS ...

Hope this will help some people.

Hopefully, this is HUGE “BINGO!”, we, FINALLY, have a winner?!

This problem has been a serious vexing problem/bug/issue for affected iPad Pro users here for an entire year!

Maybe this is, finally, a permanent fix for now for this issue for every iPad Pro affected!

I would let Apple know about this possible solution in two ways.

The best and ONLY way to get Apple to, DIRECTLY, listen to you is to use their feedback portion of their website.

iPad Feedback

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

Cognizant Apple employees read ALL feedback generated from all of the various feedback pages and transfers the data to the proper and responsible Apple teams and personnel , but NO Apple employees will ever respond with any type of direct, individual replies from the feedback you post.

The more users that post product feedback about any product issue, the faster Apple is made aware and starts working on a fix/solution for a future software update.

Also, you may want to phone contact Apple, directly in Cupertino, California, and calmly talk to an Apple customer service employee about this issue via the link below.

https://www.apple.com/contact/

It this works for all affected iPad Pro users, you maybe THE ONLY ONE who finally cracked this problem!!!

Here's hoping this is the FINAL, REAL temporary solution to this issue for every affected iPad Pro user!

THANK YOU for posting this!

Did you try the new solution 5 replies above yours?

Try locking the screen orientation in whichever screen orientation you use the most.

Do a hard reset of your iPad by holding down both the Home and sleep/wake buttons simultaneously until your iPad goes to black and restarts with Apple logo, then release the buttons.

Then try using your iPad in locked screen orientation to see if the intermittent, unresponsive touch issue goes away.

I think we have found the issue/cause, though,

Look though this post for my iPad feedback link and contact Apple posts ( they are liberally peppered throughout this post, I do not feel like posting this info, again ) and alert/post feedback Apple that this appears to be the issues with this iPad Pro touch screen issue and why it ONLY affects a certain group of iPad Pro models and users.

With the Contact Apple link, you have the option to also called customer service directly in Cupertino, CA.

Everyone needs to use the iPad feedback and Apple contact links to alert Apple that this iPad Pro intermittent, unresponsive touch screen issue is caused by a problem with the iPad's/iOS gyroscope feature and the screen rotation/oroientation feature, as well.

Best of Luck to You!

But why would it only affect a subset of devices if it was a software problem?

Update: I have had issues a few times since I locked screen orientation, but have had much better performance overall. Typing is when the problem used to rear its head. Also, it seemed to affect one zone of the screen in particular: the side away from the home button in landscape mode. I know this because then I would flip the device to the opposite landscape mode, the zone of dead keys tended to switch from the letters e, r, s, and t, to the letters i and o. Also the dead zone included the predictive keyboard zone at the middle top.

My hypothesis is that a bad gyroscope is causing all sorts of issues with the software that show up more when under strain, and in particular, when holding the device in hand and making inputs while the device is moving.

Additional observation: turning off gestures or turning on touch accommodations did no help at all and may have hurt performance on my 10.5 2nd gen.

Hi !

looks like you have this problem fairly often.

please try this and share with us:

when you have this problem

remove case and screen protector (absolutely required)

hold your ipad firmly with two hands in landscape position.

try to print long text with your thumbs (half of A4 page is enough)

try to change angle of the screen slowly during printing (the best ways is to lay on your couch, hold ipad in front of you and do this). Usually ipad will behave better or worse during this.

of course you can notice this only during “touch screen madness”

apple will give you a new ipad. but in next several month you will have the same problem. that is why it will be more effective to collect as more data as possible to locate the problem and give apple precise description.

This is an Apple problem that they are either NOT addressing and choose to ignore OR the issue is so sporadic that Apple engineers are having issue finding a definitive fix/solution.

I have been in semi-regular contact with someone at Apple that went to an Apple engineering conference recently and he has reported to me that all the engineers at that conference are NOT even aware of this touch screen issue and all of those at the conference using any model of iPad Pro have not had this issue with their own iPad Pros.

AND, for the umpteenth time, this touchscreen issue seems to NOT affect every iPad Pro model in existance.

The person I have been talking to stated that this issue could be of a location/environmental/temperature/altitude based nature, also, and maybe why this issue is so sporadic, with NO true causation and why this is difficult and hard to pin down

So, if Apple engineers are STILL NOT really fully aware of this issue AND the tech and electronics media are NOT reporting on this touchscreen issues, then my reality is correct.

There all only a small, minority of iPad Pro models being affected by this and those with this issue have NOT supplied sufficient feedback to Apple and to Apple engineers to get this issue put on their priority radar!

The number of feedback postings for an entire year must NOT be there for Apple to consider this iPad Pro touch screen issue a priority for them to fix and to issue the fix in any updates, to date.

This iPad Pro touchscreen bug is simply NOT rampant enough across the globe, it would seem.

This was a disappoitment for me to learn, for sure.

Nothing more can be done except continue to issue feedback and contact Apple by phone and, essentially, keep bugging them about this issue until someone at Apple finally gives this issue some priority.

I am only a user here, too, and I am just as limited to as what I CAN DO to help all affected by this situation.

So, I have interest in this issue and its final outcome, as well.

This issue is what is keeping me from ever risking upgrading my own iPad Pro, for all of this time.

I has been 3 long years since I last upgraded the iOS on my own iPad Pro.

All of the various 64-bit versions of iOS for the past 3-years have had some serious issues with some that still have never been fully resolved.

This intermittent, unresponsive touch screen issue can just happen at a random iOS upgrade/update and once an iPad Pro gets this issue, it never goes away.

This, to me, seems like a very severe bug, when it happens!

Unfortunately, this touchscreen bug doesn't appear to happen often enough and NOT enough feedback reported for Apple to care to solve this issue in a timely manner, it would seem.

At this very late date, it is what it is.

There is a limit to what we can do, as Apple product users, to try and get Apple's attention on this rather seemingly sporadic and infrequent touchscreen bug.

Taking every precaution, I recommend that you set up your new device “as new,” rather than from the backup of your old device. Start with the minimum number of apps that you use daily, then if all is going well, add in the other apps a few at a time. Change the iOS setting the same way, in steps, paying attention to any changes in performance. Good luck.