Camera app crashing on my iPhone 16 Pro Max

It is in settings - camera, scroll to the bottom turn off “Macro Control”. This has worked for me but not all users.

I tried the suggestion of turning off Sound Recognition, and that’s working for now. No camera crash for 2 days. (Macro setting still on.)

iOS 18.1 seems to have fixed the problems on my iPhone 16 (not Pro), too. 😌

Horrendous Apple iPhone Pro 16 camera hardware or software problem. I picked up the iPhone on Sunday, 21 September. Within two days, the camera app was crashing intermittently. And once it started crashing (push button on screen or frame, the screen goes black momentarily then dumps me back onto home screen) it will continue to crash until you do a reset on the phone. I got Apple support on the phone and, after trying to help me, the agent said 'here's a genius bar reservation' (for Monday, 30 September.)

At the genius bar, they said yup, we'll take in your new, defective 512gig mem iPhone Pro and give you a new phone (as I had originally ordered.)

It took me until last night (1 October, to pretty much have everything up and running on my NEW phone) then the d**n camera problem started crashing again!!! This suggests this is not a rare defect! There are currently 55 replies re this problem.

Baron1677 wrote:

I have the same issue camera crashes on opening app and also when you try to take a picture in text it crashes as well. Turns to black screen I have to turn the phone on and off for it to function again.

Did you update to iOS 18.0.1, which was released today?

I now have a reminder to restart my iPhone 16 Pro Max each morning and the camera works fine for the rest of the day. Following a suggestion from a non technical friend I tried another camera app, ProCamera (ProCamera. Raw+ Manual Camera). This works fine when the Apple Camera crashes. Given that other Apple apps that use the camera (e.g. Magnifier) also crash, my suspicion is that the problem lies in Apple's iOS 18 middleware or the process that transfers from a older model to the iPhone 16 (I previously had a 11 Pro Max). So waiting for a fix seems the best option.

I'll try lobsterghost1's force reset suggestion. But it seems that a number of suggestions have been made (I've tried 18.0.1 and Macro Control off to no avail) that it is hit and miss until Apple acknowledge the issue has been fixed. I'm not going down the re-install route.

To those who want to give up the 16 Pro, it's just like buying one of the first of a brand new model of car; there can be glitches. That's the downside of being an early adopter. If you don't like it wait a few months for the new device to bed in before buying. Otherwise hold your nerve. It WILL get fixed.

Sara, don't do it! Try rebooting every morning and turn off reduce motion - seems to have worked for my wife. See posts by W3JNP who has worked with Apple and can't say some stuff other than that a fix is coming in a few weeks.

Well, unverified rumors promise a fix in 18.1 or 18.2 or ...

I had enough pain to realize I would be better off with a clean reset, no restore from time machine (no, none, rien...) despite the pain, because it would avoid a lot of bleeding. Once I made that decision, I felt better. And the phone and camera and apps have been working flawlessly ever since.

I worry that Apple does not have the software to examine every time machine uploaded and downloaded a file, looking for malware that somehow escaped their control over the AppStore.

I can't prove it, of course, but I feel confident that there have been thousands upon thousands (and maybe millions upon millions) of iPhones whose timemachine backups contain poisoned software that could have been poisoned by accident (memory corruption) or on purpose (beware of the black arts here).

Apple did this to me once before, maybe 6 to 8 years ago, when my iPhone was crashing but they said it must have been my software! My software? All of my software was downloaded from the Apple app store. They told me the only solution would be to do a complete, clean erase and manually reinstall all the software I had and so forth. Either that or buy a new iPhone and do a fresh install of all the software and whatnot.

I understand how checksums and CRC encoding work. Why doesn't Apple thoroughly test every file on your machine and in your backup to determine where the flaw is coming from? Maybe they've figured out how to fix all these phones and the fix will be delivered before Halloween as a treat for the world. Or maybe not.

I have the 16 Pro not even a month old and I have been having issues since I unboxed it as well. Camera freezes and either blacks out or returns to main screen, at times the battery power will show 1% and then flash back to normal, the video stopped recording sound and then started freezing as well. Restarting the phone will temporarily fix the issues but this is extremely frustrating for such an expensive device and I’ve chatted multiple times with Apple support after paying dearly for their Apple care and all they say is restart it. They attempted to walk me through a complete delete and restore of the iOS but then lost connection and never returned my call.

This fix quite an expensive fix and it surprised me, but the camera is working fine again now I’m in Japan on holidays 😄

Switched to Japanese region after arriving and camera is working fine for days now. Maybe somehow related to region based AI restrictions in the software?

A reboot will fix the issue temporarily but if left for any time afterwards the camera will crash again even if it not been used. Such a frustrating experience, constant black screen and flashing stacks.

Did you bother reading past the first post? Probably not.

1. This is a user to user only forum, which no one from Apple participates, so we can't speak for Apple
2. Plenty of people have reported they are testing the next software release, which has fixed this for them, so just have some patience and wait till its released

Be careful what you play with in the settings so you don’t invalidate your warranty. Your best bet is to restart the device when it happens. That way, you still have all your previous activity intact and you can go back them if you want. Simply reach out to apple if it becomes unbearable. I’m sure they’ll be more than willing to sort it if not gonna be sorted in upcoming updates. For me, I just restart the phone since it doesn’t happen everytime.

Turning off the Macro didn't help me, but turning off sound recognition seems to have fixed the immediate crash. However, trying to use the camera through a third-party app still gives a black screen.

Lllibear_369 wrote:

I agree and after having the phone for over a month I’m really fed up that I have to keep restarting my phone just to take one photo for it to crash again. Taking everything off to start again is not an option. APPLE THIS NEEDS FIXING OR IM SENDING IT BACK UNTIL THIS PHONE IS FIT FOR PURPOSE!

So what happened when you updated to iOS 18.1, released this week, which for most people completely resolved their camera issues?