spinning wheel icon next to wi-fi indicating network activity

This may be of assistance to some. I read on a different forum that if say "hey siri" and then "never mind" the spinning wheel will stop. I found this to be effective if all apps and pages are closed on Safari 75% of the time. This is not a totoal fix but is still much better than having to restart. I suspect their is a connection to what's app but have not been able to nail it down. I have told apple about the 'hey siri" thing and they are still trying to sort it out. Funny side story. The upper level tech support guy I have been dealing with said that since he talked to me about this problem he noticed that he has the same problem. Hopefully this will be incentive to work a little harder on the problem. I am expecting them to get back to me this week. Will keep you all posted.

Update! Just finished with the Apple support people. If you, of course back up first, and then erase the iPad and start it up without using a back up - so set up manually - the spinning circle is gone.

Maybe someone can make sense of this. The first app that I installed was whatsapp. The problem started immediately. So I deleted whatsapp thinking it was the trigger. Problem remained. I don’t know. Still waiting to hear back from Apple. Hope the little devil Spinny wheel stays away for you

I’m just adding another data point, unfortunately I don’t have a solution either.

Got an iPhone SE (2020) last week. This is my first iPhone, after being a diehard Android fan since 2009. I manually setup the phone and noticed this issue at some point that same day. I was not quite sure what was normal on iPhones at the time, so I didn’t take note whether or not this network activity indicator was constantly spinning before I updated to iOS 14.2, but that is the version I’m on at the moment.

I can also confirm it starts as soon as I use dictation, and only a restart or a networking settings reset seems to temporarily fix it, until I use dictation again. I have not tried the “Hey Siri” fixes, because I haven’t activated Siri on the phone yet.

I’ve never had WhatsApp installed (for the person who thought that app might be the culprit).

Before finding this thread, I’d done a fair amount of searching on the problem and the iPhone SE definitely seems to be over-represented with the issue.

I’m not sure whether or not Apple and WhatsApp use the same technology. I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking, but in my layman’s knowledge, iMessage and WhatsApp are similar technologies, in that they’re not SMS/MMS.

But I don’t think iMessage or WhatsApp is the problem, it’s the speech-to-text engine or servers. I used dictation to compose an email in a third-party app a few minutes ago, and the spinning icon returned as soon as I started using the dictation (stock keyboard). It persisted until I restarted the phone.

I’m going to try Lawrence Finch’s troubleshooting steps later today.

I’m also considering installing GBoard and seeing if it happens when I use speech-to-text through that keyboard. What I don’t know right now though is whether or not GBoard uses Google’s services for that feature, or if my iPhone would still be using Apple’s services for that? Anyone here know?

If GBoard uses Google’s services, and the spinning icon issue doesn’t occur then, well that pretty much definitely tells you where the issue is.

I do not have Screen Time enabled, and my Apple ID and iPhone are both personal and not affiliated in any way with work, an organization or school account. I also do not have MDM.

Is it possible statistics are not tracked and saved due to me not using iCloud?

Thanks for trying to assist on this.

I do have an unlimited plan, and I noticed that the usage statistics that are currently displayed are for "This Billing Period". I was able to manually set specific periods on Android, but I do not see that option here, so I am assuming the period is set by my carrier (T-Mobile) and will automatically reset at the beginning of the next billing period.

With that in mind, I will try your suggestion of just taking a screenshot before and after disabling WiFi and strictly using cellular data.

Also, according to the below link, GBoard on iPhone still uses Google's servers for the dictation, so I'm going to try that first.

https://www.cultofmac.com/469485/google-gboard-improve-ios-dictation/

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.

Update: I installed GBoard. It does utilize Google's servers instead of Apple's, and I am able to use dictation without getting the persistent spinning network activity indicator. In fact, I don't even briefly get the indicator (I'm trying this on WiFi at the moment).

Unfortunately, GBoard seems to be implemented in a rather clunky fashion in iOS. I can switch to it easily enough, but there should be an option to simply make it the default, rather than still have the stock keyboard with a key for switching between keyboards. More importantly, it's the GBoard dictation that is really clunky. After switching to GBoard, if I tap the microphone key, the screen for dictation pops up, but the service immediately stops with an error message of "Sorry, I didn't quite get that." If I return to the keyboard and try again, it happens again. The only way to actually dictate anything is to allow the error message to happen, and then tap the microphone button from the error message screen. Then I am able to actually dictate a message. To make matters worse though, I cannot see any of my dictation until I am done, and then the text populates all at once in the text field.

With Apple's stock keyboad, I can see the text populating as I dictate, which is exactly the way it should work, and is exactly the way GBoard works on Android. Third-party keyboards work properly on Android, at least all of them that I ever tried. I'm not flaming Apple here, I'm just wondering if GBoard's clunkiness on iOS is specific to GBoard, or if this is the way that Apple handles all third-party keyboards.

I think this definitively shows the problem is with Apple's dictation service. Is anyone else concerned that the persistent spinning icon is an indication that the dictation service never stopped, and the phone's microphone is still "on" and continuing to send data to Apple's servers??

Next step is to try and monitor cellular data use while the network activity indicator continues to spin.

My understanding is the same as yours, and I fully expected to see the spinning indicator while dictating through GBoard, but the indicator never appeared. I dictated several messages to myself, including a rather lengthy one to see if I could get the spinning indicator to at least momentarily show up in the status bar. It never displayed, which I thought was very weird (based on the aforementioned understanding).

To clarify, the questions and comments regarding unlimited date and iCloud were in regards to why I do not have the option to reset my cellular data statistics, which I want to do in order to make it easier to monitor what is using that data.

Interesting find. I switched back to the stock keyboard, disabled WiFi, and then dictated a couple of messages. The spinning indicator never came on. I tried a couple of times.

I then turned WiFi back on, dictated a message and the indicator immediately displayed and stayed on. I turned WiFi off and the indicator has stayed persistent, so I am going to let it spin for awhile to see if anything shows up in the cellular data stats.

At this point though, I think it's noteworthy that the indicator never came on for me if the dictation was done while WiFi was turned off. Can anyone else check to see if they have the same behavior?