spinning wheel icon next to wi-fi indicating network activity

Thanks, I'll try your steps on my iPhone SE and report back.

Turn off Siri in Settings --> Power device off and on --> Restart Siri for input using the button only.

Please confirm that your last step refers to having Settings > Accessibility > Siri > Always Listen for "Hey Siri" (disabled).

I have had this EXACT same issue on both my iPad Air 3 and my two week old iPad Air 4. I have been on chat with Apple support four different times. Each time they told me to erase everything and set up my iPad as a new device and that didn’t help. I hate that that is their go to solution every time.

I have tried to narrow this down to a specific app over the past six months but yet the problem still happens. This is even happening on my new Air 4 so I know that my device is not the problem.

Purposely I did not use the speech to text feature at all for two days and there was no spinning wheel icon. I was convinced that is what was causing it. I then used the speech to text and instantaneously the spinning wheel started and hasn’t stopped even after force closing all the open apps.

So now I am 100% convinced that using speech to text is the issue. Both of my iPads are Wi-Fi only running the latest iOS version.

Somebody has to figure out how to fix this!

The issue was isolated to using speech-to-text a long time ago. There are also band-aid fixes to make the spinning icon disappear, the easiest of which is to just activate Siri using the home button and not say anything until the oracle disappears. This usually works on the first try, but it's not uncommon for me to have to do that multiple times before the spinning icon disappears.

I'm not going to go back and read 16 pages of comments, but I think the issue is only being seen on the new iPhone SE and certain iPad models.

It’s been described again and again here so it gets lost in all the comments.

To turn off the spinning wheel engage Siri and keep tapping continually and the spinning wheel will stop. What that looks like is holding the home button down until the big Siri wheel appears. You do not have to say anything. You do have to keep tapping that circle of Siri several times -sometimes up to 10 taps. Eventually the spinning wheel near the Wi-Fi stops. Often times Siri does engage and says “I’m sorry I don’t understand“ or something like that 😂

Thanks for that tip Halliday, I did not realize I could dismiss Siri without waiting it out, but yes, that method worked also. I have to qualify that by explaining that it worked on the first attempt the initial time I tried that method, but on a subsequent attempt, I had to activate and dismiss Siri about six times before the spinning indicator went away.

I suspect that all of our individual tweaks, i.e. tapping vs. not tapping, speaking vs. not speaking, immediate dismissal vs waiting it out, left leg in vs. left leg out, etc., are all irrelevant to what actually causes the spinning indicator to go away. The only thing that probably matters is that the phone is given an opportunity to close out the speech-to-text process properly, because it's simply hanging when the icon is persistently spinning.

dedfar wrote:

This is a bug. I have filed a case and uploaded a screen recording showing the bug. …

I’m glad you filed a bug report on this.

All people that are experiencing this—that want Apple to do something about it—should do similarly. (After all. Commenting here will not change Apple’s products.)

… I also had my iPhone going through a proxy with wireshark and there was little-to-no activity, so Siri's dictation is doing something funky. Let's hope they fix it soon. …

I’m very glad you performed this test.

This confirms what some of us have suspected: the «spinning wheel» is not indicating actual network activity, in this case!

(Likewise, it is unlikely that there is any significant computer resource use, either.)

… https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/9031473

That only lets you see your own Feedback. It doesn’t allow anyone else to even see it, let alone add any input.

Brilliant! That’s what worked, to stop the spinning wheel by the network icon was to summon “hey Siri“ I only had to do it once and the wheel went away! Thank you! But right, still irritating it even happens.

Interesting, since I've not seen this behavior. If you create a current backup of your device, then restore it to factory and set it up as new and test, does it still exhibit that behavior?

ATTENTION!: I have seemed to isolate the issue. Disable dictation and stand by the engineering team is suppose to be getting back to me

elietuna1 wrote:

I’m having the exact same issue with my iPhone SE as well. Exactly as described by machinist above. Only triggers with voice to text.

Well, DUH! The phone has ZERO voice to text capability. All voice to text is done on Apple’s Nuance servers, so your speech must be send over the Internet to the server where the translation is done, then the result is sent back to your phone. And it must be done in real time, so as long as you have any app open that uses voice to text there will be a continuous connection to the voice processing servers. Likewise, any time you use Siri, which is also processed on the Nuance servers.

Two possibilities:

1. Go to Settings/Screen Time and see if there are any restrictions about changing settings that would affect cellular data.
2. You have a work, organization or school email account, or your phone is under a Mobile Device Management plan and your administrator has disabled the ability to reset statistics.

You can still note (perhaps with screen shots) mobile data usage, and compare it with usage a day later.

Afterthought: If you do have MDM on your phone the spinning icon could be your phone communicating with the MDM management system.

Going back to basics, the spinning wheel means something is sending or receiving data. If you use dictation it uses data continuously, because all speech-to-text processing is done on Apple’s servers. And it will use data continuously with any speech-to-text service, whether it is Apple’s or Google’s.

Sending a voice message doesn’t do speech to text translation, so it won’t use data.

Having spent about 3 hours with Apple technical support on this over several calls, the two technicians I spoke to ended up recommending return of the iPad if a full restore does not solve the problem. I received my new iPad late December and my network icon has been spinning roughly since then. I was dreading the restore process, not being familiar with apple products, however it went very smoothly and I was happy to see that my icon is so far stable after several hours of use. I realize some of you have already tried this step without success, just sharing my experience so far.

Machine_Ruse wrote:

...

Back to our problem though, we have definitely identified the user actions which prompt it to occur and we can reliably recreate the problem [at least on those devices already exhibiting the problem]. We've also identified the actions which temporarily fix the problem. The biggest obstacle is this problem does not affect all devices, which means the cause could either be faulty hardware or related to software (specific apps, combination of apps, and/or settings within apps). This means we can't reliably get an Apple tech to recreate the problem on their end. …

(Emphasis added)

Yes. This is the «biggest obstacle» in getting Apple to prioritize this issue: there is only a visual symptom, with no reproducibility; let alone anything pointing to a root cause (or even an issue that goes beyond visually “annoying” or “troubling”).

…

Plus, the problem we are experiencing is not new, and other people have actually identified the same exact problem and temporary fixes years ago. And even though I know I have reported all of this to Apple, and I believe the numerous other people who state they have reported it, the Apple techs I have spoken with act like Apple has never been made aware of the issue. …

The fact that «the Apple techs [you] have spoken with act like Apple has never been made aware of the issue» probably has more to do with how such are entered into the issue database, and the keywords «the Apple techs» are searching the database with. (There may even be two or more “levels” of issue databases: known issues vs. “varied reports of speculative issues”.)

(Back when I worked Technical Support, at a very different company, I don’t ever remember even being told of any “issue” database.)

…

What is needed is some way to «reliably get an Apple tech to recreate the problem on their end.»

Without this, there is no “known issue”, only “speculative” reports.

(I know. That seems “harsh” or “dismissive”, but it is the reality, at least to Technicians.)

If this issue can be reliably reproduced on an iDevice in Factory conditions—so no restored settings or Apps—then we’ll have either found faulty hardware, or something that «an Apple tech» can «recreate»!

If this is found for even some class of iDevices (such as iPhone SEs, perhaps), then we have something even more reliably reproducible!

Perhaps this is the way forward?