Messages frozen and crashes on iOS 17.5.1

Just out of curiosity… does Apple watch their own Community pages, cases, etc… ?!? From this page, we’ve all been to stores, opened cases with support… you’d think by now their support team/stores would know of said issues. Yet when I was on with them yesterday, she had no clue. Had I not just bought this phone, I’d be moving elsewhere. Paying for something that doesn’t work 100% is always wonderful.

Pro tip: if you experience this on a Mac and it crashes, write a detailed bug report in the Problem Report for Messages” window to Apple. The MacOS development team read _everything_ you write in there. Everything.

they like to know what you’ve tried, what your configurations is, steps to reproduce, and how often does it happen 9/10 times for me.

I’m including a link to this thread in my report as well.

Turning off stolen device protection does not have any effect. It is only temporarily and does not fix the issue.

Freezes are back after some time and iMessage crashes.

We will need to see a fix from Apple in order to get rid of it.

I wanted to raise a support request online but their only option is to discuss via Messages. How ironic. I can't wrap my head around there being so many people with the same issue and no resolution from Apple. I'm literally going to have to get an old phone with an older iOS so I can use iMessage as this is the only way my kids can message me as they don't have SIMs in their devices, not to mention anyone else work or personal trying to message me.

Has Apple even acknowledged that Messenger doesn’t work after 17.5.1? Three weeks without a patch is totally unacceptable, Genius Bar is clueless, and having a phone that can’t send or receive texts in 2024 seems pretty important.

I am also having issues with iMessage!! When I go to settings and scroll down to Messages my iPhone 15 pro stays frozen and will not do anything. iMessages will not respond at all. This is happening on my wife’s iPhone 12 too. Apple Needs to Send Out a Patch ASAP to fix the widely known issue with IOS 17.5.1.

APPLE FIX THE PROBLEM NOW!!🤬😡🤬

This is nothing but a temporary fix. Please only post "success stories" once you have at least reached 1-2 weeks without any further freeze issues.

All erasing, wiping, resetting instructions are nothing but a temporary fix that last a couple of days at best. Unless Apple brings a real fix, this is just to keep you busy dealing with Support.

I get the vibe there are multiple issues at play. When I was on the phone with a support supervisor they had me check this as well. It didn't fix my messages app issues. The question seemed out of left field, but seeing your experience with it I understand why they asked me the question.

As said numerous times, this is just a temporary fix and does NOT resolve the issue.

Same as for resetting the phone, wiping it or even release more storage. This has NO long-term effect.

Freezes will come back after a certain time.

My texting app will work for a couple days, then freeze for a couple of days. This is crippling to my job, which relies on fast communication between several people. This has been going on for far too long!! I had thought Apple would have fixed something so major by now! Unfortunately, I am going to have to switch to an Android phone. I realllly don’t want to do it, but Apple has colossally failed me!

14 pro max. Same issue. Tried everything. Mine did it before 17.5.1. Updated to that and still same problem. Reset phone, yata yata yata. Same problem. Fixes itself after a little bit but then starts again. iPad Pro and watch work fine. I have Verizon. Not sure if it’s them or Apple or both. So annoying.

That's a really interesting observation -- I'm noticing this affects messaging on my Mac to some extent, too. And I've been using it for Messages when I usually don't because of the inability to use the phone, so maybe that's somehow contributing to a circle of messaging failure (eye roll).

I've restored my iPhone 3 TIMES ALREADY. 

First time it worked for a week 

Second time lasted 3 weeks

I just restored again. 

What can we do to avoid this?

How many of my clients do I have to anger / lose thing to explain it isn't my fault I didn't reply to them in time?

APPLE WE ARE DESPERATE HERE.

PLEASE HELP

I've restored my iPhone 3 TIMES ALREADY. 

First time it worked for a week 

Second time lasted 3 weeks

I just restored again. 

What can we do to avoid this?

How many of my clients do I have to anger / lose thing to explain it isn't my fault I didn't reply to them in time?

APPLE WE ARE DESPERATE HERE.

PLEASE HELP

My Epson et 3750 and et 3850 both erratically will sometime print complete multiple page jobs and then sometime stop and say printer busy and when I say continue instead of cancel, restart job without completing previous job on iOS 17.5.1. Problem does not exist on iMac/Windows or Android devices.