Messages frozen and crashes on iOS 17.5.1

Going on for a month. Apple broke this. Apple needs to fix it. It’s all their native apps. All these BS fixes posted here are not working, it’s apples job to remedy this. Another feature that did t work is airdrop. Anyone else experience that too? Come on apple, when is your fix going to be released!?!

This is still happening more than two weeks later?? How have Apple not provided a bug fix yet or at least a rollback? I am literally carrying my iPad around so I can receive iMessages.

Same here... I've tried restarting which worked the first day, resetting which worked yesterday and today I tried restart, reset, log out and nothing makes any difference today which is very frustrating since messages are kind of important when you're trying to sell a house! Come on Apple do better by us and get this fixed asap!!

Update: I did a full factory reset on my 14 Pro Max with 17.5.1 and as of right now messages and everything are working. I will see how long it lasts and report back but hopefully a fix is released very soon.

Same. Started the day after my iPhone 14 Pro upgraded to 17.5. Took it to the store and the technician ran diagnostics, everything hardware and software is fine. he blamed my VPN and said there were known issues with VPN and 17 since September 🤷‍♂️. uninstalled VPN reset and rebooted in the store to no avail. His suggestion was to then set up the phone as a new device, but I have older contacts not in the cloud and so I opted to restore a backed up version prior to 17.5 downloading. No issues now.

100% related to 17.5 causing messenger to slow then lock completely.

Issue hasn’t resurfaced the past 6 days after I restored a backup from iCloud from the day before installing 17.5. Think 17.5 can corrupt something on installation and restoring a previous version onto 17.5 fixes it 🤷‍♂️

have vpn back on and no issues.

This is getting worse and worse. Now even a third phone in the family is confronted with this issue.

Now all had to switch to WhatsApp. Was this the intent, Apple?

Is there any fix in the making Apple?

I am on 17.4.1 on iPad and 17.5.1 on iPhone and I am having freezes on iMessage as well on my iPhone iPhone 15 Pro Max and my iPad. this has been going on for more than a month,even Before updating the iPhone

I had this after updating and was traveling. I discovered a new feature: Stolen Device Protection under Settings -> Face ID & Passcode -> Stolen Device Protection. Turn that off and messages (and other things) work much better. But then got on another plane and :( messages is back to white screen...

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.

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.

Had same issues (Messages, Phone and FaceTime all went to all white screen when opened; Settings app froze when trying to access settings for any of those apps; Standard power down (hold side button and volume adjust) wouldn't work) on wife's iPhone on 17.5.1. Spent 2 hours on phone with Apple supervisor (got escalated after nothing worked with initial interventions) going through all the various troubleshooting steps. Ended up doing full wipe and reinstall and NOT restoring from iCloud backup (had not made a local/Finder backup prior to calling Apple).

Bummer to have to start phone from scratch (and with no photos), but supervisor's hunch was that the issue might return with restoring a backup. After losing most of day to the issue (and, again, 2 hours on the phone), I didn't want to chance it.

I'd suggest people call Apple support--supervisor confirmed that only reports and troubleshooting with Apple actually builds any data for them, for future fixes. In other words, as others have said, the engineers are browsing forums to look for issues to resolve!

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.

I've tried everything, including dropping my phone off at an Apple authorized repair store, and still have no ability to send or receive messages after the 17.5.1 update. FaceTime is also an issue. Some people can't even make calls.

I'm very upset that Apple hasn't even owned this as an issue. Since being able to use a phone is a SAFETY issue, I'll purchase an Android phone within the week if they don't address this. My household has 3 MacBooks, 3 iPhones, and 3 iPads, and we've been using Apple products for over 20 years. It's absurd to treat customers this way.