Messages frozen and crashes on iOS 17.5.1

Called Apple. They tried to do a few things and even share screen but the thing they send that would pop up on the screen didn’t show on my end. I explained about messages crashing, white screen, black screen, not being able to access messages in settings, etc. First had me do this:

press volume up quickly, then press volume down then hold power button until phone shuts off. Didn’t work. Then she had me go to General -> scroll down to transfer or reset iPhone -> reset -> reset network settings. Did that, she called me back, didn’t work. Then she had me so the same thing but instead of reset network settings, it was reset all settings. It worked. Did it Tuesday and it’s now Sunday. I had previously tried adding more storage and clearing off stuff on messages to no avail. Hope this helps.

I’m seeing the same issue, and I noticed it happened almost immediately after I used my Mac for the first time in a while. I can’t say if I’ve used it since my iPhone updated to 17.5.1 or not, but as soon as messages appeared to try and sync between the two the issue started.

I’m going to try and sign out from my Mac on iMessage to see if it makes a difference

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

General>Date & Time> Set Time Zone Automatically

I’m in the US and mine somehow was changed to Beijing, with the update.

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 was also unable to use FaceTime until now as well.

I hope this helps someone.

I am having the same issue. I sent a text, and it freezes up when i try to open it back up so i have to hard restart my phone, which takes some time for that to actually come up as well.

Having the same issue here. Apple says it’s a bug on the update. No solution as of yet

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.

Done that (disable focus), did NOT work. Still freezes.

IOS 18.0 is expected to come out on July 8th!! Hopefully they have a fix for everyone who has issues with 17.5.1 IOS. Wanted to let everyone know!!

System locks up constantly forcing me to use a shortcut to trigger a shutdown or restart. Issue happened initially on CarPlay. No if I hit the General icon, it locks up and closes the app. Apple support are useless - try reinstalling all apps.. Yeah, that’s a waste of my time; they have zero diagnostic tools or common sense of fixing software issues caused by their firmware changes. No testing. Apple quality is abysmal.

This is not a permanent fix, issue occurs again after some time.

Same for people claiming you need to re-register iMessage to make it work. It is only coincidence those workarounds have a temporary effect.

[Edited by Moderator]

This is not a permanent fix, issue occurs again after some time. 

Same for people claiming you need to re-register iMessage to make it work. It is only coincidence those workarounds have a temporary effect.

Apple, please fix it.

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.

There are many threads on the topic and I've tried various combinations of settings (see my Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1d3puny/1751_messages_app_lockshangscrashes/) but I have yet to find a perfect combination to prevents lockup/crashing of the settings and messages app.