Messages frozen and crashes on iOS 17.5.1

Mine hasn’t had the issue for 2 weeks since restoration of a backup 2 days before upgrading to 17.5.1. My messenger would slow down and then lockup and freeze or white screen, hard reset/reboot would fix for about 30 seconds.

The Apple Store was clueless.

I restored to a previous cloud back up from before 17.5 upgrade and it works great again. I suspect the upgrade corrupts a file which is replaced with a restoration.🤷‍♂️

I have been struggling with this issue for 4 days and watching this and other threads for a resolution. My phone was mostly unusable.

* iMessages just gave me a white screen.

* Settings, then Messages hung until I killed the app.

* Settings, Mobile Network, did the same.

* Most other apps which presented any kind of text input box also hung including Google Maps, Slack, Teams, even the iOS home screen search function crashed.

* Safari seemed to work (so I could use Google Maps via the web just not the app).

* I couldn't receive calls. Callers just got my voicemail.

I was traveling over this entire time and getting my tickets out of Apple Wallet was hit and miss as the phone frequently crashed. WhatsApp worked but I didn't get any message notifications. Even the alarm on the phone didn't work!

Upon returning home, I decided to reset the phone and restore from iCloud backup. This was also problematic as Settings, General, Reset iPhone hung, as did signing out of iCloud.

The fix for me was to put the phone in recovery mode and use Finder on my MacBook to force reinstall iOS 17.5.1 via the update iOS option. After that, I followed the normal setup procedure and restored from iCloud. My phone is now working as normal.

I have a potential fix. Check your time and date settings.

General>Date & Time> Set Time Zone Automatically

Mine was changed from my normal location to Beijing.

Here are the steps I preformed:

1. Disabled set automatically.
2. Changed it to the proper Timezone.
3. Re-enabled set automatically.

After about two minutes, I received every text I have missed over the last four days.

I hope this helps someone.

This just happened to me today too, right after I configured Focus mode for the first time. All of a sudden my Messages app would freeze every time I tried to Share anything. I also wasn’t able to Share from Books or from Microsoft 365. If I tried, the app would freeze and I would have to kill it.

I turned off all the settings related to Focus and the issue seems to have gone away. My iPhone still seems slower when sharing, but it is not crashing anymore. So turn off Focus completely. Hope that helps.

An update to my original post. I believe the issue is related to having large attachments in your Messages settings. I don’t think it has anything to do with how much Cloud data or IPhone storage you have, but I could be wrong. All I know is that I deleted a huge amount of large attachments in my Messages setting and I’ve only had one issue since my previous post. And that issue started when I attached large files to some messages again. Cleared more out and I’ve had no issues. I’ve relayed this to Apple already. Has anyone else tried this yet? I hope it works for others and if not,

i hope Apple figures out a fix asap. You don’t realize how much you use Messages until you can’t anymore lol good luck all!

Some more details:

Settings -> Messages will not open

Settings -> FaceTime also stuck

HomeKit is reporting no hub found

This means the problem is Apple’s IDSz Their registrations system is borked.

Since signing out of iCloud everywhere and signing back in doesn’t resolve it, this is not a temporary state problem.

Best guess: if you turn off messages, and FaceTime, and HomeKit on every device, and sign out of iCloud and wait 4 hours maybe IDS will register you with a better connection.

I’ll try it tonight.

5 hours after I tried the workaround and it’s still doing fine. Hard reset. Up volume, down volume, then hold right side button until the phone reboots. You may have to do this several times. Then go directly to Settings -> Message -> then turn off “Focus”

A backup communication for those that need to communicate with family is WhatsApp until you get your issue fixed.

I’ve had the same issue. Messages not working on iPhone (XS MAX), since updating to 17.5.1.

messages either wouldn’t open, or just open to a black or white screen, then crash. I also couldn’t open messages in settings.

I tracked it down to a problem with my Apple Watch. I erased the watch, and unlinked it on find my - then set it up again - and boom - messages is working perfectly again.

I had to select erase on the watch itself, as it didn’t work from the phone.

hope this helps. It solved it immediately for me.

After struggling with this for few weeks, I found a simple solution which seems to work ok for the past 4-5 days. Before this my messages were absolutely nonfunctional, and it caused a great deal of inconvenience as I was not able to see my OTP code from websites such as bank.

I went to Settings> Messages > Text Message Forwarding> and turned off message forwarding to my iPad, and this is it.

Edit: Restarted the phone after this change and messages started to work.

I usually don't like to post; however, I hope this can help other users and Apple Developers to narrow down on what to look for to fix it. I googled for a solution and most solutions are extreme like reset the phone and restore a backup and the problem returns after few days. I have not tried those solutions and was hoping that the next release (after 17.5.1) probably will fix it. This works for me, though I miss the messages on iPad but it's better than no messages on iPhone all together.

Did you try this - it has worked for me and has not reoccured in two weeks now:

It's a problem with Apple's IDS registration

1) Log out of messages on all your devices. Mac, pad, phone, watch, everywhere, even the old device in the closet that you forgot about.

2) Log out of FaceTime everywhere too.

wait 4 hours for the registration system to reset you

Then in the morning, log back in and Messages and FaceTime will work again. If not, then you're probably missing a device somewhere to look harder through all your closets and in the garage.

My solution was to delete the eSIM, which was a secondary number I had from a different telco. Problem solved. Of course I want to have that secondary number on the one iPhone. So I am trying again, got another eSIM for the secondary number from the same secondary telco, activated it, now waiting for telco to port my previous number over. When I did this the first time, it was fine for the first few days. I also went and added other eSIMs purely for data (in two separate countries), and that was fine.

Perhaps it has to do with organizing my iMessages across the two numbers. Both are associated with my appleID.

Alright gang I think I have a fix (at least it worked for me). If you go to settings, click on the text message button, and turn off the focus button (should be the top item). Hopefully you can click on the text setting as I couldn’t for a few days. Hope that helps.

Called Apple Support. May have fixed things. Here’s how.

Settings > General > Transfer or Reset Phone (scroll to the bottom to find it) > Reset > Reset All Settings.

It won’t wipe your phone completely, but you’ll have to adjust your settings after it restarts including display settings, Face ID, credit cards in your wallet, etc). The CC restoration was faster than expected.

after this I’ve not been dealing with an unusable messages app or getting frozen messages settings. 16 hours later and I’m still issue free.

My messaging problem was resolved for about a month (after restoring from a prior 17.5.1 back up) until I reinstalled Microsoft Intune to be compliant with my corporate policy. Messages locked up and froze again. I promptly uninstalled intune and disabled my VPN, rebooted and problem resolved again.

there’s definitely something with the VPN or Intune network stuff.

I did read that apple’s doing an emergency release of 17.5.2 (before 18 in September) as early as this week for bugs and security patches, hoping this fixes messages 🤞🏻

I had the same issue using an eSIM. Support had me go into focus and turn it off. Then go into settings, messages and turn off Imessage and reboot. Once up again turn iMessage back on and reboot again. Lastly go into settings ,transfer or reset iPhone, reset, reset network settings. Reboot once again. I no longer get the frozen white screen on opening iMessage. Hope this helps :)