iPhone 12 Pro freezing on iOS 17.4(.1) when selecting text (or sometimes when trying to type)

It sounds like you're experiencing quite a frustrating issue with your iPhone 12 Pro on iOS 17.4.1. Given that you've already tried several troubleshooting steps without success, here are a few additional methods you can try:

1. **Force Restart Your iPhone:**-If your iPhone won't turn on or is frozen - Apple Support

   - Quickly press and release the Volume Up button.

   - Quickly press and release the Volume Down button.

   - Press and hold the Side button until the Apple logo appears.

2. **Reset All Settings:**

   - Go to **Settings** > **General** > **Transfer or Reset iPhone** > **Reset**.

   - Select **Reset All Settings**. This will reset all system settings to default but won’t delete your data.

3. **Free Up Storage Space:**

   - Check if your iPhone has enough free storage. Go to **Settings** > **General** > **iPhone Storage** and make sure you have at least 1-2 GB of free space.

. **Try system repair:**

   - Since you’ve updated to iOS 17.4.1 without success, consider to repair. it can help fix many system issues without data loss.

5. **Contact Apple Support:**

   - If none of the above steps work, it might be a deeper issue with the iOS or hardware. Contact Apple Support for further assistance. They might provide specific solutions or recommend a service appointment.

Given your concern about losing the eSIM, I recommend trying all the above steps before considering a full wipe and restore. If a full restore becomes necessary, check if your carrier offers any solutions for reactivating your eSIM remotely. 

I hope one of these methods helps resolve the issue with your iPhone.

[Edited by Moderator]

Good luck to you! Do keep us posted.

For the rest of us, please fill a bug report at https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/. My report number is FB13806510, you can quote that in own submission. For reference, the title for my report is "Unable to select text, or access network services dependent on Apple ID, including System Update"

Same thing on my 12 Pro.

I've only found two things on the phone that take 'a very long time' right now:

• Going into Settings -> General -> Dictionaries either hangs Settings app completely, or if I do a network settings reset lets me get in, but takes a few minutes.
• Trying to check if a Software Update exists from the phone just spins the spinner and never completes. (Via desktop connection it claims it's up to date).

Since the hang happens for me when the keyboard is used, and the dictionaries are what take forever to load, I suspect something related to those two things.

Incredibly frustrating to have to restart my phone a few times a day.

Any luck with the iOS 17.5 update?

I also have the same issues - The best workaround I've done so far is to never get and copy anything or close the app over and over again until it allows me to type.

For the update I had to connect to my Mac to do it as the update spun and never picked up 17.4 or 17.4.1.

First of all, this thread is incredibly hard to find. For a while, I felt like I was the only one with this problem. Only way it showed up on Google was "iphone hang text select" and setting the date range to "last month". "iphone hang select text" e.g., you won't find any of it. Same goes for "ios text select crash" or "iphone mark text crash". (<- some fodder for Google right here ...)

So: Experiencing the exact same situation. Problem started on an iPhone Pro Max 15 with iOS 17.4, no change with 17.4.1.

• Hang / crash when selecting text (not always, but most of the times)
• Keyboard sometimes hanging itself up all of a sudden, need to restart
• BETTER after restart, forced or normal; but no more than for a few minutes
• Problem signing into the Security menu of iCloud (in Settings)

Let's see if we find some more common ground and maybe find the culprit here! Same as most of you, I've tried plenty of other stuff and changing settings, to no avail. Some things odd I noticed are:

• I cannot do a full backup to my Mac; neither via Finder or via iMazing; it goes on for many hours and doesn't finish
• I've got plenty of space, photos set to "Optimization" -> iCloud, only few stored on machine, yet at one point, my iPhone ran into "no more memory" and I couldn't save any more photos; it's a 512GB phone, actually plenty of space left - even with all photos stored on the machine instead of in the Cloud it wouldn't have been full
• my iMessages showed up in iCloud unusually high, I think around 300GB. Didn't make sense; I disabled iCloud Messages on all my machines, will have to wait two more weeks so after 30 days, they are actually fully erased on the Cloud, then try setting it to iCloud again

A few years back, I had an issue with Notes using up hundreds of GB of mobile data; no one could help. Called Apple so many times. My solution was: Accessing the IMAP server via Thunderbird, which showed me some "ghost" directories for notes. That was when they changed the way notes are stored, I think. Anyway: I deleted the folders (that didn't show up in Mac Mail) manually and that resolved that issue.

So, maybe some app / sync process is filling up the available space / RAM / processor / who-knows-what?

My questions to fellow sufferers of this issue would be:

• Can you check if any section uses up unsually much space on iCloud?
• did any of you run into a "space full" sort-of message even though you still had plenty of space?
• Did you ever have an issue with the Notes app, such as unsually high data volume when syncing?
• Is anyone using iMazing?
• Can you do a full backup of your iPhone to your Mac - one that actually finishes?
• Any troubles with iMessage size-wise, when looking at Space on iCloud and under the tab with the space needed on the volume / "hard drive" of your iPhone?

I would think we're gonna find at least one more commonality that actually causes this trouble. Seeing that it's so incredibly hard to find any similar reports on the web, it's not unreasonable to think this is a minority issue. Culprit must be somewhere, and Apple is probably not going through the trouble helping us there ... they will probably recommend a full reset. And: I would do one, but not w/o a full backup to disk (which I cannot do right now ...)

[Edited by Moderator]

Haha, I think you are me 😸 Did the same. Hard to make sense of the activity log, though - it's tons of data each minute, not due to the malfunction - same happens with my friends iPhone 15 (that doesn't trouble her).

What MAY be interesting: When an app stalls, when the "text highlight -> stall" issue happens, an actual error log is created. Those can be read as well (different ways to find them, easiest for me was to use iMazing to get them). Just not making any sense of them, too much info, too little knowledge to know what to look for.

IF eventually an Apple tech will look at the issue, they might easily find the culprit, though. Just kind of amazing to have such a weird issue with many different symptoms - but all the same - and just two dozen of us experiencing it. More likely to hit the jackpot at the big lottery 😅 ...

Not sure anymore. What I tried: Signing out of Apple ID, doing a restart. No problem! Then: Keep on using the iPhone without being signed it. Guess what happened after half an hour?

You guessed right: Problem reappeared, without any Apple ID in place on the device.

Also, set your device to flight mode, therefore effectively preventing the device trying to connect to any Apple servers. Doesn't change the problem, unfortunately ...

Seems SOMEHOW connected, but not as in "problem happens when device connects to the server"

Update: So I finally opened a case with Apple support. As expected, they want me to do a full reset and then reinstall backup from my Mac before they will even look at the error logs. Alas, the very nice customer support guy didn't even know what I meant by error logs ...

Since I cannot do a full backup to my Mac (only iCloud), I'm looking at quite some hassle with reauthenticating all my banking apps which will take at least two weeks. Didn't care - I have to do it, otherwise they will not follow up on the issue.

Reminds me of when my iPhone used up dozens of GB for my notes in a month and they had me jump through so many hoops, doing backups, fully resetting the device etc. with no solution. I had to access the iCloud IMAP server via Thundermail to find various hidden folders that contained relict data -> manually deleted those and the problem was gone.

It would take a proper technician probably a few mere minutes to find the cause of the error by looking at the error logs, but seems to be hard to get in touch with those.

So: Goodbye to some of my data, I'm doing this now. Hopefully, there will be a better solution which I will post if I find it.