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 went to the Apple store today to address this problem. First, they removed the version of 17.5.1 that I had downloaded/updated my phone with. Then they downloaded and updated my phone using one of their computers. The woman at the genius bar said that if you download an update and the wifi goes out during the update process, it can create issues.

After, they restored my phone to a previous iCloud back-up from before I had upgraded to 17.5.1. Messages are now working and the text font looks different, reflecting the new update. This was not the case before.

Fingers crossed this sticks. Otherwise, I'll have to start over with a blank phone and lose all of my contacts, calendar, photos etc.

tl;dr: My iCloud data storage was full. Deleted a 60GB iPad backup and some other things. Boom, Messages was normal again. I am a digital packrat and have "save all messages" turned on.

Long version:

I suffered from the above problem. Another iCloud family member had a similar issue likewise after 17.5.1 upgrade. Symptom: sporadic crashing of Messages app on invocation. My experience worsened over time, to the point that it wouldn't even open. Green SMS messages wouldn't get served in a timely manner or occasionally ever, to my other Apple devices.

So I called/texted (on another device) Apple Support. They all were nice and did a hardware diagnostic, etc. etc. eventually recommending to do Restore using a computer (Mac or Windows). In anticipation of doing that, I took a backup of the iPhone and noticed that iCloud was at the 2TB limit. I deleted said file above (and yesterday to try and take an on-Mac local iPhone backup I had flushed almost 200GB from the Mac, which is iCloud synced). Well with that last 60GB iPad backup deletion (which the confirmation flow suggests to be a permanent delete; I suspect the Mac files may hang around for some time for recovery) BOOM, Messages was working like a charm again. The grey storm clouds parted, beams of radiant sunlight shown upon the land, angels were singing on high, and I was again able to share my pearls of wisdom, sharp analytic wit, eye-rolling dad jokes, and marginally sufferable selfies to my friends and family. Said friends and family if they stumble across this discussion may be instead trying to fill up their iCloud account to pause their suffering. Either way you're welcome. YMMV.

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.

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 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.

Hello all,

I also have had issues with the messages app, same as everyone else here so I won't go into the laundry list of 'fixes' that I attempted, the same as everyone else here. I contacted Apple Support a week ago to see if they could help. Of course, the person I spoke with also had no idea what would cause the issues because he'd not spoken to anyone else about it and it was new to him (yeah right). I told him to read the message boards because this was a widespread problem and I was shocked to hear he'd not already gotten requests for help. Anyway........whatever. He asked me to do a little troubleshooting, to which I said I had already done all the things and I wasn't going to drag it out by going through his list of fixes. He then forwarded me to a specialist. Long story short, she ran a program on my phone to get data analytics to send to the engineering department, along with a screenshot of my Iphone storage. She said she'd get back to me by today. Well, my storage was about 3/4 full and I wondered if maybe my messages had too many large attachments (pics, videos) this past Tuesday I reviewed them and deleted a bunch, and I mean it was a lot, of videos and pics I had sent via text message over the last 4 years. Messages app still didn't work. Until Wednesday afternoon. All of a sudden, now I receive and can send messages! And the messages are forwarding to my iPads as well, which I was also having issues with. No issues since. I haven't heard back from support yet today. Not sure if I will. But at any rate, its working as it was before. I don't know if engineering was able to do something on their end without me knowing, which I don't think is possible since she had to get my permission to access my phone to do the diagnostics. But maybe it was my messages storage being overloaded with large attachments. I would suggest trying the same thing, maybe its as simple as that. I noticed today that I have a TON of storage on my phone now, as in I'm only using 1/3 of the total amount. I apologize for the long message, but I hope this helps everyone and if you're still having issues, just call support and tell them you need to speak with a specialist.

Good luck to all, this is absolutely frustrating and I'm hoping I have no further issues. I will report back if I do.

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.

Mentioning again, as this seems to be an easy way to fix it, if it works for you:

• Have an sms be sent to your phone.
• On the lock screen, having received the message; tap and long press; a window opens to reply.
• Reply to the message from the lockscreen.
• Having sent the reply, my phone was fixed.

I, too, had multiple apps freezing and crashing; not only Messages, but also Settings, Maps etc. I could not go to Messages settings, as Settings were frozen. However, the above solved it. Having replied to an sms (normal sms btw, not iMessage) from the Lock Screen, I did not have to touch focus options or anything. Three days now and counting; the issue has not reappeared.

OK, yes it's a problem with Apple's IDS registration. So here's a pretty good fix:

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 your closets and in the garage.

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.

Same Issues as OP. Message started acting up when I recently flew and put my phone on airplane mode, and selected the airlines new onboard wifi.

Problem Manifestation: 1) Selecting Messages either presented a black screen, or 2) Messages screen frozen 3) sending a message failed with a blue line in the Message screen showing the message was being sent, but would take 10+ minutes then fail, 4) Incoming messages would show up delayed (if at all) by 20-30 minutes and only show in the banner, but not in Message. I would have to do a hard reset (sound up, down, the press and hold the right side button. The message would appear once rebooted, 5) Going into settings and clicking either Messages or FaceTime would hang iOS in Settings. Swiping the Settings screen close would return iPhone to the prior state.

Attempted Resolutions: 1) Hard reset, 2) Turning Message off in Settings (after doing a few hard resets) 3) Repeated with FaceTime. 4) Hard reset and turning Message back on. 5) Cleared space on iPhone storage 60 GB available) 6) Used on Cell service, switched to WiFi – no success.

Recent Changes on iPhone: 1) Added an eSIM 1 week ago for travel to Japan., but iPhone was working fine for a week. iOS is set to automatic.

WHAT WORKED: as another poster said, turning off FOCUS in Messages )Settings) seemed to work.

Just got off the phone with Apple support, and we got it working again. This is the fix that worked for me:

1. uninstalled my VPN
2. turned off messages in iCloud settings, waited for it to finish. Then,
3. signed out of iCloud
4. Force restarted the phone (press UP key, DOWN key, then hold power button, do NOT slide power off just keep holding power button until ot restarts)
5. after restart, sign back into iCloud.

Messages was working fine for me after this. I even turned messages back on in iCloud and it is still currently working. If it stops working I will probably go through this same process except I will not turn messages back on in iCloud for now.

I had this happen about a week ago briefly, but then hit me all day today. I’m hoping Apple Support has given me a workaround, but did confirm that their engineers are aware and actively looking for the cause and a permanent fix.

TLDR: Remove any VPN services you have installed (even if they’re not turned on) and then Delete All Phone Setting.

ISSUE: Opening iMessage presented a white or black screen that could be cleared by slightly dragging up from the bottom of the screen and releasing. However, the app interface was frozen like a photo, displaying a message send attempt from hours earlier. Restarting the app or phone returned to the same moment frozen in time when opening iMessage. The setting menus for iMessage and FaceTime were also inaccessible causing the Setting app to freeze and needing to be closed.

FIX: Multiple steps as instructed by Apple, but the most relevant was Settings>General>Reset>Reset all settings. Did this once and seemed to work… For a few seconds before I was treated to a brand new frozen iMessage screen to enjoy!

Subsequently instructed to remove all VPN accounts and profiles from Settings, even though I didn’t have any turned on or active, and repeated the Reset. All seems to be back to normal🤞. Sending and receiving iMessages and texts fine.

Hope this can work for you. Good luck.