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I caN send messages from my contacts. I can reply to messages. However, I cannot type anyone’s name or phone number into the to: bar. After typing three numbers or letters (sometimes more or sometimes less) in the to: bar, iMessage crashes.
I have already updated to the latest iOS, and I have reset all settings and have done a reboot. I also tried disabling all keyboard features (auto-correction, etc). Nothing has worked. Any ideas?
iPhone 6s, iOS 12
Hi gt6065a and welcome to Apple Support Communities.
I see you're having an issue with the Messages app and it crashing when you try to manually address a new message.
As Messages is an app that can't be deleted and reinstalled, as long as you are updated to the latest iOS version (13.2.3 at the time of this post), if the behavior persists, you may need to consider reinstalling iOS on your device. While this shouldn’t affect any data stored on the iPhone, it would be a good idea to make sure you’ve got a backup in place:
How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support
Once you’ve successfully backed up your device, follow these steps to reinstall iOS, making sure to choose “Update” when prompted:
If you can't update or restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
Cheers.
I've had this problem across multiple iPhones!
I had an iPhone 6+ from 2015 until 2018 and sometime towards the end of using that phone my 'Messages' app started crashing whenever I would type 2-4 characters (letters or numbers) from the app when I'm starting a new convo (not just choosing from contacts).
Last year I got an iPhone XS Max and off the rip (I too imported my messages from iCloud though so idk if by starting my phone completely new if this would still be a thing) when starting a new convo, typing letters or numbers (2-4 characters) makes my app freeze then crash over and over.
The ONLY way I can start a new convo is by adding the person to my contacts app and then launching a message from there instead.
My XS Max is on the latest iOS and this is still happening... this must mean something in my iCloud messages is causing this right? I have so much on my phone, I really can't just reset the whole phone and start from scratch again. Is there any other workaround? Maybe just deleting all my messages?
Help!
Based upon what I learned from my recent experience (and with some help from Apple), you probably have a corrupt message or maybe the messages file is too big. Starting over with a clean slate in your messages will probably fix it. I fixed the issue by resetting the phone (erase all content and settings). Maybe there’s another way to get rid of the offending message(s), but it’s my daughter’s phone and she doesn’t really want me experimenting with it.
If you want to experiment, maybe you can try the following instead of erasing all your data:
1) in settings/messages, set your phone to keep messages for 30 days. This might get rid of the corrupt message.
2) start deleting messages thread by thread and see if you can fix it that way
3) maybe someone in the community has other suggestions as well
Note that if you attempt a backup and restore and you try to keep your old messages, you will have the same issue.
Yeah, for the time being I might just try deleting individual messages (what I've been doing so far). My 'Messages' app is considerably big (hovering over 1 GB) so there must be something going on in there.
I'm also gonna try do what you said about keeping messages for up to 30 days only and hopefully that might eventually delete it assuming an actual fix is never made or found. Thank you!
Set the message duration to 30 days and deleted a TON of stuff just a second ago including tons of old groups, etc.
Now, I can sometimes type more than 3-4 characters in the messages app to try send a text, but the app is still crashing every time. I can't imagine my remaining conversations have corrupt messages in them. All the ones I have left are super short with one or no attachments in them!
Try backing up your photos and contacts on iCloud. Then erase your phones data and settings. Do not restore from backup, because whatever corrupted the messages may still be hidden in there. That’s what I had to do and it worked.
Thanks Alex. I restored the phone and the problem went away. Then I downloaded all of my messages from iCloud and the problem recurred. So, it appears that I have a corrupted message somewhere
Just deleted every last message from my app and it's still crashing when I try type things in to start a new conversation... is it not a corrupted message after all?
I’m not an expert...just letting you know what worked for me.
iMessage keeps crashing when typing to:
