Pages lagging in ios 17 (selecting text)

My Pages was working just fine on iPad Pro 11in (2018) before I updated to ios 17.


However, now whenever I go to select any amount of text (1k words or more) I face unbearable lag (15-30 seconds) and even the app crashing. This makes selecting portions of text quite arduous. I can still control-all, but the lag persists and I have to wait before I can format/copy/etc.


I have downgraded my iPad to ios 16 and then back to ios 17. I’ve done a fresh install. A reset. A shutdown, but to no avail.


Honestly, I would be fine just downgrading to ios16 (the lag is bad enough that it makes the iPad useless when using Pages); however, when I upgraded to ios17, a new backup was made that overwrote my old one.


Preferably, there’s a solution to this problem. If not, I hope someone can provide a suggestion for how to downgrade my iPad while being able to restore from my backup.


Thanks!

iPad Pro, iPadOS 17

Posted on Sep 19, 2023 3:03 PM

Reply
3 replies

Sep 19, 2023 5:36 PM in response to chuck047

Unlike macOS, Apple will near term eventually block your downgrading ability of iPadOS 17 to v16.6.1. Since I don't do mixed generation iPadOS backups, I can't answer those backup/restore questions.


There may be features of Pages v13.1 for iPadOS that aren't quite compatible with iPadOS 17 and it would not surprise me to see Apple release a cross-platform update to Pages. The timing of that is internal to the Pages product team, and until then, I suggest you reduce your 1K word selection to a smaller selection to see if that improves your performance issues.

Sep 22, 2023 9:41 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply!


Unfortunately, limiting the amount of text I select goes against my writing instinct (it’s just the way I write — there’s a lot of moving things around and deleting things I’ve rewritten). I tried to transition to a different word processor but Word is a monthly subscription now (I’m staunchly against such a payment method) and GDocs has privacy concerns that cannot be ignored for my work.


That being said, and with your other provided information, I made the decision to downgrade back to ios16 during the limited window when it’s possible.


For anyone else facing this problem:

The downgrade solved everything.


The only additional problem I had was that when I upgraded to ios17 my icloud backup for ios16 was overwritten with a new one (for ios17). I was unable to ‘retrieve’ that backup once I downgraded to ios16. What I did was prepare my Ipad while in ios17 — I reverted safari’s use of profiles from the multiple I’d created to the original single one and I saved everything in the files directory with a usb.


Then I downloaded ios16 onto my computer, did a hard restore, and then used a backup I had sitting on my computer (a little less than a year old, but better than nothing).


The process was cumbersome, but worth it.


I did end up losing some information, but those were mostly related to specific apps (for me, leisure/gaming, which was a worthy trade).


Pages lagging in ios 17 (selecting text)

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.