User profile for user: Davy_ray
Davy_ray Author
User level: Level 1
74 points

Missing apps in sharesheet iOS 18.1.1

Light night I came to export something from an app, something I do quite often but have not done in about a month or so, and when I click share, the first time, it is slow to show up, but after maybe 10 seconds or so, it does. However, it does not have any 3rd party apps listed. Mainly, I wanted to save it to Files, but nothing shows up. Normally I would see Files, DropBox, OneDrive, Pinterest, and a bunch of others. Now nothing. After the first slow display of the sheet, it then comes up quickly every time I try, but no change. See screen capture


It does however show up on Apple services and apps. So if I am in the Photos app, or take a screenshot and want to share it, or anything like that, then it is there.


I had been on iOS 17.6 before. Never had an issue until I noticed it last night. No idea how long it was like that, but I know it was fine about a month ago (also on 17.6)


So I upgraded to 18.1.1 last night (from iOS 17.6) in the hopes that it would fix the problem, but it does not. It is not just with that one app, the app I usually use this for, but for others as well. That is how I found out I had a problem.


What I have tried so far:


  • Closed all apps
  • Rebooted phone (more times than I can count)
  • Hard reset phone (vol up, vol down, and side button until reboot)
  • I read that adding another language would fix it. Then I should be able to go back to English. I already had French installed, so I switched to French as my primary language. I even tried to reboot at this point.
  • When that did not work, I switched back to English and removed French
  • When that did not work, I added English UK (new language never before been on my phone), but that did not work either. What happened is the share sheet did not come back up again. I tried several times, and it refused to come back up. So I went back to English. Slow to come back up the first time, and still with missing items, but at least it came back up.
  • I went to recently added apps and removed a few. I have about 300 apps, and over the last month, I think most of them got updates, so I am not about to uninstall half the apps on my phone in the hopes that it works. I did uninstall the last few that I know I added brand new, but same issue.
  • Edit Actions as seen on screenshot only shows me the items listed there, but I can reorder them. There are no other items


I also noticed that the phone got pretty warm while trying all of this.


Device: iPhone 14 Pro Currently running iOS 18.1.1


Anyone have any ideas as to what else I can try?


iPhone 14 Pro

Posted on Nov 20, 2024 4:04 AM

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User profile for user: Davy_ray
Davy_ray Author
User level: Level 1
74 points

Posted on Dec 5, 2024 5:07 AM

Someone posted a working solution on my post in Reddit. I am not sure if I can link the post, but I will cut and paste the solution here:


--------------------------------------------

Solution


A few people (myself included) have solved this by uninstalling an app. Which app is hard to say. For this person it was a printing app:


In my case I think it was an app called "TextMe"? I don't even

remember installing that but I found it by doing the following:

  • Open your Photos app, which for many people still has a working share sheet
  • Click the share button
  • Click "More" to see all apps available to share sheet
  • Pick an app and uninstall it. It's most likely a more obscure app.


To test if it's fixed you have two choices:


Option 1: Restart phone


Option 2 (faster): Add/Remove Language

  1. Go to Settings > General > Language & Region
  2. Add or remove a language
  3. Click the confirm button


Share sheet is now working in all apps. What a major waste of time this has been.

--------------------------------------


My notes and observations:


  • in my case, the ultimate culprit was a VoIP app. I removed 3 at once (TextNow, TextMe, Talkatone). The problem was resolved. So it was one of those 3.


  • I will wait a few hours or a day to make sure the problem does not creep up again before reinstalling them. Apart from Talkatone, I use the other 2 on a semi-regular basis.


  • I took this opportunity to also remove any app on the share sheet that I no longer use or had not been updated in years from the app store. Might as well clean up the phone a little bit. I have over 300 apps.


  • While testing out the solution, I found my phone would get pretty warm and the battery would drain pretty quickly. When the phone was warm, I found it to be a bit sluggish, so I would wait it out to let it cool before trying more apps.


  • Now and then after removing the apps, I found the Share Sheet in photos stopped working altogether. I would reboot the phone to fix that problem and continue on with my testing.


  • So while the problem was caused by a faulty 3rd party app, I still believe there is a bug in the iOS that allowed a faulty 3rd party app to break the share sheet to begin with.



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User profile for user: Davy_ray
Davy_ray Author
User level: Level 1
74 points

Dec 5, 2024 5:07 AM in response to -_MoMo_-

Someone posted a working solution on my post in Reddit. I am not sure if I can link the post, but I will cut and paste the solution here:


--------------------------------------------

Solution


A few people (myself included) have solved this by uninstalling an app. Which app is hard to say. For this person it was a printing app:


In my case I think it was an app called "TextMe"? I don't even

remember installing that but I found it by doing the following:

  • Open your Photos app, which for many people still has a working share sheet
  • Click the share button
  • Click "More" to see all apps available to share sheet
  • Pick an app and uninstall it. It's most likely a more obscure app.


To test if it's fixed you have two choices:


Option 1: Restart phone


Option 2 (faster): Add/Remove Language

  1. Go to Settings > General > Language & Region
  2. Add or remove a language
  3. Click the confirm button


Share sheet is now working in all apps. What a major waste of time this has been.

--------------------------------------


My notes and observations:


  • in my case, the ultimate culprit was a VoIP app. I removed 3 at once (TextNow, TextMe, Talkatone). The problem was resolved. So it was one of those 3.


  • I will wait a few hours or a day to make sure the problem does not creep up again before reinstalling them. Apart from Talkatone, I use the other 2 on a semi-regular basis.


  • I took this opportunity to also remove any app on the share sheet that I no longer use or had not been updated in years from the app store. Might as well clean up the phone a little bit. I have over 300 apps.


  • While testing out the solution, I found my phone would get pretty warm and the battery would drain pretty quickly. When the phone was warm, I found it to be a bit sluggish, so I would wait it out to let it cool before trying more apps.


  • Now and then after removing the apps, I found the Share Sheet in photos stopped working altogether. I would reboot the phone to fix that problem and continue on with my testing.


  • So while the problem was caused by a faulty 3rd party app, I still believe there is a bug in the iOS that allowed a faulty 3rd party app to break the share sheet to begin with.



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User profile for user: IvanB88
IvanB88
User level: Level 1
16 points

Nov 20, 2024 8:41 PM in response to Davy_ray

If Bluetooth is turned off, the issue occurs; however, if it is turned on, everything works fine.


I just did another test. I went to Settings > Siri & Search and turned off and then back on all the options under Suggestions, then restarted the phone. Now all the missing apps have reappeared, and the share button no longer freezes when I press it.

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User profile for user: Mauro311
Mauro311
User level: Level 1
8 points

Dec 9, 2024 8:49 PM in response to Davy_ray

I had the exact same problem and this fix worked for me! I updated my case with apple and made sure they referenced this thread so that others get the help when they call into apple. TextMe was also one of the apps I deleted. You can then reinstall it and it works fine. I think it just screws up something during the firmware update process.

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User profile for user: Davy_ray
Davy_ray Author
User level: Level 1
74 points

Dec 9, 2024 12:28 PM in response to lucky13820

I agree. I had TextMe installed for many years. I use it on occasion. I guess an update done in mid November caused the problem as that was when my problem started. I was on iOS 17.6 at the time for a long time, so in my case it was not an OS update that broke something. Usually, OS updates tend to fix weird issues, so I was surprised that it did not.


I hope that Apple fixes their problem. A third-party app should not be able to cause such a problem.


Out of curiosity, was the app that caused this issue for you "TextMe"? It seems quite a few people had this app, including myself.

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User profile for user: Damien Smith
Damien Smith
User level: Level 1
15 points

Dec 9, 2024 1:40 PM in response to Davy_ray

I searched for TextMe, and whilst i dont use it there was an old image of it on my phone, but appeared not to be fully downloaded. Deleted it, did the language change (removed an extra language i had added in general settings) and then as a precaution also went to Photos - opened the share sheet and selected edit - and TURNED OFF all the apps that weren't selected.


Sharesheet back to working!



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User profile for user: IvanB88
IvanB88
User level: Level 1
16 points

Nov 21, 2024 4:21 AM in response to Davy_ray

The only other option I changed was toggling Background App Refresh on and off.




After these three steps, I managed to resolve the app freezing issues, and all the apps reappeared in the share tab.




I also contacted Apple Support to report the problem, and they confirmed that other users have experienced the same issue. They should fix the anomaly with the upcoming 18.2 update.




Let me know if you’re able to resolve it!

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User profile for user: Davy_ray
Davy_ray Author
User level: Level 1
74 points

Nov 24, 2024 6:38 AM in response to IvanB88

What bugs me is I was on 17.6 and it was working fine... until it was not. Upgrading to 18.1.1 did nothing to fix it. 18.2 is supposed to come out in early December. So I hope that it indeed fixes it. If not, I will call Apple Support. I have read here and a couple of other places that this is a known bug and that 18.2 is supposed to address it. Only a week or 2 more to wait. Fingers crossed

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User profile for user: Damien Smith
Damien Smith
User level: Level 1
15 points

Dec 4, 2024 3:59 AM in response to Davy_ray

Ive now had two long calls with Apple support, and have updated as requested screen recordings of the issue. No response in 5 days. I said there were threads on this, but no apple comments.


Tried all the suggestions including deleting and reinstalling my third party apps.


Sharing a screengrab still brings up the full share sheet apps BUT anything else esp browsers (safari, firefox or chrome) shows just 4 mac apps - and freezes. Very frustrating, Roll on 18.2



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User profile for user: Davy_ray
Davy_ray Author
User level: Level 1
74 points

Nov 21, 2024 3:49 AM in response to IvanB88

I went to Settings > Siri and scrolled to the bottom. Disabled the 5 options there (though allow notifications was already disabled) turned all options back on. Rebooted. Same problem. I had to try a bunch of times just to get the share sheet to even display. When it eventually did, same issue


My Bluetooth is always on. But I went to Settings > Bluetooth and disabled it, then enabled it again, to no avail.

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Missing apps in sharesheet iOS 18.1.1

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