Messages frozen and crashes on iOS 17.5.1

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...

I believe all “fixes” are red herrings. It seems to be indeterminate.

I have two iPhones, one has Messages crashing constantly and I have not been able to work around it anytime (12 mini). The other one worked (14 Max Pro) fine at first - but then froze too. But that one I got to work again - only to have it lock up a little later. After that it stopped / started working again with random causes.

Apple needs to get involved here. Severely crippled without messages..

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.

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!

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.

Hello all,

I read through all of these and was glad (sorry about this) that I was not the only one having this issue. In working with Apple Support, I was going down the path of completely erasing my phone and restoring from a backup. The first step they suggested was to Reset the configuration (no data loss, but personalizations gone). Before doing that, I reset the Network Configuration Settings (Settings -> General -> Transfer or Reset iPhone -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings). The biggest thing you lose is your Wifi profile settings.

This seems to have fixed my iMessages problem. I am no longer getting the White screen or app crashing. I hope this helps some of you.

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.

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!

My phone seems to be working as long as I have iMessages in iCloud turned off in the iCloud menu. As soon as I turn that on the messages app starts to misbehave including the stall and crash. And the settings app starts to crash too.

I am astonished to find this problem has been on-going for so long and nothing has been fixed. My iPhone 12 began acting up similarly to everyone here last week. Hours accessing support has not fixed anything. When I called today the "senior level" person said they just got notified two days ago that this was a problem and the only thing to be done is keep looking for a software update.

Same issue here on two phone models:

• iPhone 11 Pro, 512GB
• iPhone 12 Pro, 512GB

Nothing seems to help, must be a bug introduced in iOS 17.5.1 as it used to work before.

Please get this fixed asap.

Update!

I noticed that many here are having multiple devices, just like me. So I did the following:

1. force quit all apps on both devices.
2. turn off both devices
3. turn on only one device

immediately received a bunch of notifications and able to read messages.

let me know if this works for you too - and also if anyone experiences this without having multiple devices (even on Mac)

update again 5 minutes later… back to square one. Crashes with only one device started. Getting sick of this.

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.