Spinning wheel icon

Hello Fantine,

It sounds like you're seeing spinning wheel on the menu bar of your iPhone even when there's no background activity.

Did you recently purchase this device and set it up using an iCloud backup? If you've done that within the last few days, what you're seeing can be iCloud restoring content from the backup. Make sure to stay connected to a stable Wi-Fi network so the restore process can complete in a timely manner.

If you did not set up your phone using iCloud backup, have you tried to restart the iPhone? You can follow the steps here to do that:

Restart your iPhone

Regards.

I was told that Apple engineers don’t even look at that feedback link. That link is more for requesting features in future iOS versions.

When I called in to report this issue, I’ll was told that everyone having this issue needed to call Apple support to report it if they wanted it to be addressed. I don’t think that you posting that link is really gonna help anyone here. I agree that you should just stay out of this forum thread b/c your not helpful at all.

To everyone else having this issue - please call in to Apple support. This is a bug, the rep and engineers already admitted this to me (and others). Don’t listen to the trolls on this thread.

I went to the genius bar at the Trafford Centre Apple Store today with my spinning wheel and battery issue.

Dropped the phone off, 10 minutes later they rang me saying they’ll replace the phone as a problem with the Bluetooth component in the phone.

so far so good will keep you posted if the spinning wheel arrives again.

Thank you. Unfortunately being up to date on the software version did not work for me. I am currently on 14.6 and was still having this issue until I turned off dictation again yesterday. Oh and by the way this issue has been on my previous iPhone 7 and now on my iPhone 8, so definitely not specific to a certain phone.

Glad that worked for you. I've always had the "Analytics sharing" option disabled on my iPhone and still have the issue with the constantly spinning network activity icon. The only thing that worked for me is turning off dictation, since that proved to be the trigger on my iPhone SE (and also on my wife's). The spinning network activity icon hasn't returned for either of us since turning it off 4 days ago.

I really hope they fix this soon. I rely on dictation a lot and hate that I have to turn it off as a workaround to Apple's iOS bug.

To anyone else who’s having this issue: set your phone to activate Siri with the home button, then after using dictation and the spinning wheel icon shows up, press the home button to activate Siri and then press it again to deactivate it & the spinning wheel should go away. May take a couple of times pressing the home button to make it work but it’s at least a little easier work around than having to restart the phone.

Of course it would be nice if Apple got on this & released a real fix for it.

It’s so unfortunate that Apple has not corrected this issue. I called I believe 4 times and created a case about this issue and of course they said they were not familiar with the issue. They forwarded my complaint to engineers and they said it was normal. I explained no way is this normal and they relied again with to deactivate SIRI; which in fact did stop the spinning wheel completely but I kind of like having talk to text. After approximately 3 months of back and forth with Apple support it is of my opinion that we’re stuck with a spinning wheel so long as we use SIRI talk to text. I look forward to going to Samsung when my contract ends with 8 more months of payments or if I can pay off sooner. Again the phone itself is nice and small and works otherwise great but **** does this thing eat batteries when that spinning wheel is moving

That will not stop the spinning wheel all together. Siri dictation must be disabled as well in order to stop the spinning wheel. I tried on two SE 2020 phones just background app refresh and spinning wheel came right back. With that being said it obviously worked for bewilhone1967 but I had no luck at all without disabling dictation.

No permanent solution found. The most permanent option I found that worked was using a VPN like NordVPN. The VPN reduced my data speeds to 70% normal download and 93% normal upload. The spinning wheel is gone.

Other temporary solution:

Settings>General>Keyboards>Enable Dictation to OFF. Kill all apps running. Reboot. Re-enable Dictation. The problem is I use Siri and talk to text very often. That’s when the wheel returns. I’ve seen this issue as far back as 2016. I’ve reported to Apple many different times. I’m using iPhone SE (2nd gen). My iPhone 11 Pro I had before this did it sometimes. I think the bug is related to certain processes terminating thus needing to reboot the springboard, reloading all processes. It’s truly annoying. If anyone finds a better permanent solution, please post it here.

I bought an iPhone SE a few months ago because my iPhone X kept having problems with lines going through it. I figured I’d go back to a simpler phone... but the SE has constantly had the spinning wheel problem next to the WiFi icon. I watched probably 10 YouTube videos and tried everything suggested to no avail. I work at a school and the 5th graders saw me in the hallway messing with the phone. I had just turned my phone off and on AGAIN and they asked if they could help. Several suggestions were offered that I had already tried then one of them said... go to your settings, choose Safari, scroll down and click Clear History and Website Data. I did that and the spinning wheel was gone! It’s been gone all day!! I hope this works for you, too!

I guess none of us are smarter than a 5th grader! Not even Apple!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201351

The SE 2020 issue is specifically related to using dictation which triggers the spinning wheel but restarting the device in our cases actually does get it to stop until you use dictation again

Thanks for providing that link! I also reported this bug and included links to 4 separate Apple discussion pages I found pertaining to this exact issue (in iOS 14). I'm not sure if they will read them, but they should.

*My current (hopefully temporary) fix has been to turn off "enable dictation" in keyboard settings since dictation seems to trigger this on my phone. I turned it off yesterday and the spinning wheel hasn't returned. However, I've lost a very useful feature as a result.

yes I’ve been told by Apple it’s a software system fault on some of the SE phones Apple are very aware of this. But they don’t care as software isn’t covered under the warranty. So they’re still selling the phones without telling people of the now an issue with the software. It’s to do with when you open dictation it sets off the spinning wheel and only way to shut it off is to power down the phone. It’s unbelievable Apple know about this refusing refusing to do anything about it and still selling the phoneThey just say there’s nothing you can do about it because it’s software and software isn’t covered under any warranty. So basically They’ve sold us all phones that have a fault that they know of and they just don’t care. My advice is do complain and don’t take all the rubbish they will try and fob you off with everything to say it’s not his problem. Asked for your phone to be sent to the technical team and they will confirm it is the system fault the more people complain. Then maybe Apple will do something about it but I’m not holding my breath

I have the SE 2020. I had the spinning wheel forever. Nothing I did would stop it until I shut off dictation and SIRI and that finally stopped the spinning wheel. Interesting that it’s. Not stopping it on yours. I’m interested in knowing if this stops your wheel from spinning when you disable both. Be well my friend