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

Since about 2 days ago my good old iPhone 12 Pro has started going nuts. Whenever I try to select any text on a webpage (or in any app) and often when I tap on anywhere that brings up a keyboard to start typing the app freezes and then after some time crashes.


I tried rebooting and it helps for about 1 min after which same stuff happens again. I


also tried resetting the dictionary, turning off check spelling, predictive typing, etc. in the keyboard setting which didn’t help.


Furthermore I tried unticking all the checkmarks in the selected dictionaries (though most of the time the settings app freezes when trying to open the dictionary section.


Finally I tried updating to 17.4.1 (from 17.4) which also didn’t help.


Interestingly I was unable to update from the phone itself, it was spinning on checking new version until finally throwing up “Unable to check for new version”. I had to update using the mac and on 17.4.1 it behaves the same.


I am afraid to try the wipe and restore from backup nuclear option as I will lose the eSim and I’m in a different country now from where I got the line from and it will be a challenge to restore it.


What else can I do?


iPhone X

Posted on Mar 28, 2024 12:38 PM

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Posted on Apr 16, 2024 8:53 AM

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]

51 replies

May 20, 2024 2:54 PM in response to ChiffaNe

One brief update - I found a way to see iPhone logs from a mac - just connect it via a cable and open Console app on mac and select the iPhone on the left and click “Start streaming”.


But the amount of data there is insane - thousands of entries every second. Spent about an hour reproducing the freezing and trying to find the relevant logs entries to no success so far. I did find that one of my obsolete airline loyalty cards added to Wallet was still hammering the server and flooding logs so turned it off, so that was a bonus :)


Also had a couple of times when the software version check and the icloud security settings actually worked.


If anyone is able and willing to spend the time and localize the log entries related to this bull crap everyone on the thread here would be grateful.

May 21, 2024 10:59 PM in response to ChiffaNe

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 😅 ...

May 21, 2024 11:02 PM in response to ChiffaNe

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"

May 21, 2024 11:47 PM in response to ChiffaNe

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.

May 23, 2024 11:26 AM in response to ollimuc

Great work! Very detailed steps and explanation!


Quick Q: Can I clarify if you backed up to the internal SSD of your Mac, or is it an external disk – and if so, can you outline the specifications of your external disk? (And asking this because my Mac has 256GB primary SSD, and my iPhone has 1TB storage, I want to eliminate all variables before jumping through these hoops)


Even quicker Q: Full Device Reset refers to the Restore button yeah?

May 23, 2024 1:39 PM in response to ervintwj

Hi ervintwj,


Even quicker Q: Full Device Reset refers to the Restore button yeah?

Sorry for not having been clearer. If you open up your device on Finder, it's the "Restore iPhone" button (located right next to the updates button). So I guess - yeah 😅. My Finder's not in English, so I had to google some Finder images to find the actual text on the button.


Basically: Factory reset, completely wiping the device.


As to the backup question: Maybe iCloud backup works better for you? I'd have a full disk backup anyway, just in case. Squeezing 1TB into 256GB may be difficult, hence an external disk would make sense. I think my backup (roughly 300GB) took about an hour, I used my Macs internal SSD, the speed was around 100MB/s, so an older HDD hooked up via USB might work just as well. For my regular backups, I do use a Synology disk station, speed there is notoriously low - but good enough for TimeMachine as well as iDevice backups. Most of the times, I use iMazing (which used to be great BEFORE Apple changed the necessity of "trusting the computer" by entering your passcode on your device EACH time and not only once ...), since it's easy to use different internal as well as external disks for your backups. But if you google "Manually changing iOS backup folder on macOS", you'll find ways of doing it via Terminal without the need to pay for additional software. Before I used iMazing, I already had iTunes (before Finder took over the job) backup to an external device that way.

May 24, 2024 8:51 AM in response to ChiffaNe

This is VERY frustrating - and the reason why I've practically begged the Apple support gentleman to have someone look at our error logs to maybe find a better solution. Maybe you could check iMazing or any other 3rd-party-backup app if they can help you physically back up the entire app (so it won't have to be downloaded again from AppStore, which will be problematic if the app has since been removed). If you can get your hands on another iPhone to test if this works, this could maybe be a good solution?


If not - keeping my thumbs crossed 18 will eventually solve the issue for you (I expect it'll be rolled out around end of September again?).

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

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