How to fix iPhone 16 Pro Max Freezing issues?

So the folks talking about doing a restore again phone-to-phone were spot on.

My iPhone 16 Pro Max would lock up, freeze, etc after I restored from iCloud. For a long time I couldn’t even get to the SETTINGS on the phone to try to erase. I learned over time that if I just left the phone alone for long enough (overnight, or maybe 4+ hours) and didn’t reboot it, I was eventually able to get to the SETTINGS without it freezing.

Once I was able to get into the settings, I did an “erase all content and settings”, but saved the eSIM. Once done, I started anew and restored phone-to-phone. Everything worked perfectly for there on. The eSIM was there, and no freezing issues at all now. WHEW.. Thanks much to the folks who mentioned this.

Ok. So this is what I did:

took me a few tries but I was able to wipe it out completely and start fresh again. This time I transferred everything from phone to phone. Instead of having it go from iCloud backup. It took 1 hour to transfer it all but it all worked and I have no issues. I will note that I did have a developer beta of iOS 18 on my old phone. The_phillymacight have been on to something there. But it’s working good now. Just wish apple Reps could have saved me 7 hours and told me to do it that way instead of trying to wait for everything to download from iCloud.

Alright everyone, please try this if you have a MacBook.

Follow all the steps while using cellular network and not WiFi if possible (it produced a lot less crashes for me using cellular).

1. Plug in your phone into your Macbook
2. Go into finder and select your phone from the list of options
3. Turn off Find My iPhone by going into settings > iCloud settings > Turn off Find My iPhone (this might take a few tries given that the phone sometimes crashes in settings)
4. Go back into Finder on your MacBook and click Restore iPhone (NO BACKUP)

The steps above got my phone back to a brand new state.

Now, instead of downloading all of your stuff from iCloud like the previous time, just transfer everything from your old phone (by keeping them nearby) if you still have it.

This should hopefully fix the issues for all of you too!

Best of luck!

I had the same experience. I was on the iOS 18 gold master with my 14 Pro Max before switching to the 16 Pro Max. I tried using the iCloud transfer method twice, wiping the phone each time, but kept running into major freezing issues. Half of my apps, including Settings, would cause the phone to freeze completely. On the third attempt, I restored to iOS 18 via DFU, and then tried setting up using the phone-to-phone transfer option. Since then, like others have reported, the issues have been resolved. It was incredibly frustrating, but everything seems to be working fine now

I finally fixed the issue. The problem was related to the VPN connection, which was somehow interfering with the Wi-Fi, causing it to be blocked or work only partially. I went to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management, clicked on the VPN connection (which was in a 'connecting' state), and deleted it. Once that was done, the Wi-Fi icon reappeared, and iCloud restore resumed as expected.

I had the freezing issue on the 16 pro as i was transferring data from the 15. I tried the hard reset - vol up/down and then pressing the right upper button. did not work. I also tried plugging the phone into the mac and trying to find it in "Finder". did not show up. I went to the apple store.....Problem solved the following way. First connect your phone to your Mac. Then start the hard reset process detailed above and in other emails. make sure you press a while on the right upper button until you see the Apple logo on the phone. The phone will then show up in "Finder". You will get the option to "restore" at this moment. Success in getting the phone working. I did the icloud restore vs direct phone transfer. Good luck

I had this problem. Took it to the Apple Store and they suggested reloading iOS. When I got home it started hanging and restarting again. I had set it up from an iCloud backup. I tried resetting the phone and setting it up by transferring the data from my old phone. Now it works properly.

this did resolve my issue.

1) plug new iphone to your mac or pc.

2) follow the instructions to restore the iPhone to factory settings (while plugged in to mac or pc, click volume up, click volume down, hold the power button until the restore screen appears).

3) click ‘restore and update’ on your mac and the iPhone will reset.

4) you may have to go through the setup again and it may fail and ask you to reset on your iphone.

5) at this point you should be good to move forward with setup, but select the data transfer option of iPhone to iPhone. ensure your two device are in proximity and everything should take 1-2 hours.

Same thing happened to me transfering from iphone 14 pro max to iPhone 16 pro the phone kept restarting,freezing, and apps were not loading etc brought it to apple and they swapped it for new device but it still kept happening… ended up resetting the iphone to factory settings using my mac as stated from a previous user then doing a phone to phone transfer instead of icloud backup and everything worked!! just like everyone else i wish they would of told me not to do icloud restore but lesson learned only do phone to phone avoid icloud restore at all costs!!

Hi op,

I had the exact same experience on my 16 Pro. I had system stability diagnostics done on it and was told it is a hardware defect.

Look for kernel panics in the crash log.

Will be exchanging mine once they have stock.

I ended up getting it to work by fully restarting the process as if I just opened the box. Full reset and did the direct phone to phone transfer not using the iCloud option. Took a while, but worked perfectly.

Actually my problem was Norton VPN.

I had previously disabled it on old phone but somehow was active on the new one

have to go into Apple SettingsGeneral>VpN & Device Management>VPN Status Not Connected; Personal VPN>Not connected

I had the same problem. I got mine to work. The fix is to start over. Transfer all your data from phone to phone. Do not transfer your data from iCloud backup. That will solve your problem.

UPDATE: I wiped the phone (but kept the eSIM settings) and tried again, this time by transferring from my old iPhone 13 Pro Max 256GB - and it's saying that it will take only an hour! So, it's clear that restoring from iCloud is NOT the way to go, under any circumstances. I wish Apple had made that more clear. I was very disappointed, but glad I could figure out "the way".