Messages frozen and crashes on iOS 17.5.1

It working now for me since 2 days no frozen any more

1- setting > focus .. turn focus status to off

2- i went to App Store update all my apps

3- I force exist iMessage .. swip up

4- force restart .. quick click and release volume up then volume down and long press power and restart

all works perfect now

OK, here's another diagnostic data point:

I have an old Apple Watch (V1) and I recently reset it "Erase all Data and Contents". Immediately after doing that Messages on my iPhone broke (again after working well for maybe 24 hours). Then I restored the watch and pair it with my phone again, and Messages starts working again. Then I deleted it and it broke (again).

very sus

Coming up on three weeks without messenger issue after restoring a previous back up before 17.5.1 was installed. I’m going to unsubscribe from this thread now. Good Luck!

This problem is ongoing, my phone seems ok after restoring a few weeks ago, but I just had to restore my iPad again this morning after it stopped being able to send or receive messages. Nothing else except a full restore seems to help even temporarily.

I have an apple watch, but I seldom use it. Most of the time its off. Turning off forwarding fixed it for me. I will turn on the forwarding to see if the issue returns.

Just talked with Apple senior support again last night. They said it’s now a known issue and the only solution they have now is to wait for the upgrade to 17.6

Zilliak wrote:

Same issue, i have to restart 5+ times a day. I turned off focus and havent had an issue yet, but it would be nice to have Apple say they are aware and investigating....not sure what causes it to lock up but it hard locks....also my watch is out of sync as well. It gets late notifications like texts or calls and ringing is out of sync as well.

Perhaps a long shot:

Do you use VPN? If so, delete the VPN profile in Settings/General/VPN & Device Management/VPN. Don't just turn it off; delete the profile.

This worked for me: From Blenny- Go to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management > VPN > click on your VPN > Delete VPN

I have a fix! It works stable for the last few days!!!

On the Lock Screen when a message is received, Tap and long press, a window opens to reply! Reply to the message sent it and then you can access your messages as normal!

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.

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...

I talked to support for a while about this the other day. The workarounds they had me try were:

1) Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset All Settings

or

2) Go to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management > VPN > click on your VPN > Delete VPN

This seems to help.

This has been happening to my iphone 14 pro max and my wife’s iphone 15 pro max.

to fix mine, i had to remove my physical sim and use it on an old iphone 6 just so i could send and receive sms messages. This fixed my 14’s messages app. so i have 2 phones for now while this problem persists. Yesterday i tried the “turn off stolen device protection “ and returned my physical sim. So far so good.

however, my wife has an esim so she can’t just switch out the sim temporarily. She also turned off stolen device protection which fixed her Messages problem yesterday. She woke up this morning however and the Messages problem is back.

frustrating.

Do you have any Focus modes active? If so, turn those off first temporarily then try. Once I turned on the Focus button in Message settings, it started working. Not sure it will last but it's working for now.

Anybody tried disabling Focus in Messages settings? I have the same issues but so far, it is looking good after disabling Focus. I’ll post here again if the issue reoccurs.

FYI, I’m running 17.5.1.