How to identify new iPad icons near battery indicator?

my wife’s 5th generation iPad, 18.2.1, had it appear too. Hard reset it went away. I have not seen it on my M4 IPad Pro yet. This is the symbol.

He wasn’t correct though. It was clarified by Apple today that the symbol indicated an app is downloading a file in the background. The list that was carelessly shared by the other guy and didn’t even include the blue logo with the cog and arrows. If it was easy to find on a list then we would not be here trying to find a solution.

DavidR1378 wrote:

Can I add to this with my experience and it might make some sense. This only appeared on my iPad on the 3rd January 2025 which is a relevant date. We changed from copper wire to fibre optic cable on that day. As soon as we were up and running the little icon appeared. Is it possible this means you are connected to fibre optic network not cable anymore? Just my four pennies worth. Hope this helps.

Appearance of this icon and your switch to full-fibre broadband is nothing more than coincidence. Other Users that have noticed appearance of this icon are known to be using other (non-fibre) network bearers.

While purely speculative until Apple offers some other explanation, it is perhaps possible that the appearance of this new icon, seen for short periods after updating to iPadOS 18.x, is linked to background download of LLM (Large Language Models) that are used by Apple's updated Machine Learning and Apple Intelligence functionality.

Once initially downloaded to the target device, these models are infrequently updated - and this, possibly, might explain why this icon only appears sporadically while models are initially downloaded and installed.

I’m a bit late to the discussion, but I had this symbol pop up yesterday morning, and that same morning had gotten an alert that I could update for my iPad (my organization reviews updates before we can download or install them.)

So last night I told it to install the update (the symbol was still there when I plugged it in), and lo and behold, this morning the symbol was gone. I’ll check back later to see if it comes back but currently it’s not there. If it does come back I’ll make another reply and let y’all know.

Airplane Mode does not necessarily turn off Wi-Fi. And if there was a sync in progress the icon probably would not go away, it is waiting to reconnect.

However, I agree that it is not in this link→Learn the meaning of the iPad status icons - Apple Support. The closest I can find is:

Syncing. iPad is syncing with your computer.

Definitely to do with downloading/synching, but the real question remains: why does it persist after downloading/synching? Rebooting makes it go away and it will return as soon as you download/synch. Then it will stay again.

This is definitely NOT the usual syncing symbol; unless they decided to make it persistently appear and make it more obviously annoying.

From what I can see it’s actually a tiny gear surrounded by arrows.

Please look carefully at the posted image from the user and the images on the list you linked to. You are incorrect. When people are concerned about an issue that doesn’t seem to have a solution they do not need misinformation from a careless people.

Hey. Thanks for participating! Please climb down off of your soapbox. I received a callback from Apple, and they’re escalating the issue to the next level of assessment. That icon is not in that list.

Have a great day!

…wait – you’re not responding to me though. I think we’re saying the same thing. Still, vpaw’s just trying to help.

More helpful than criticizing others, why don’t you back up “it was clarified by Apple today” with some links or screen shots of your own? I mean, if you’re policing absolute acccuracy. Why don’t you have to prove prove your worth to this thread to the standard you’re holding others to?

people are allowed to be ‘careless’, ‘inaccurate’, or even downright wrong. That’s what trust or reputation scores are for, like upvotes or downvotes. It’s a crowdsourcing dynamic, a community forum, not a competition; your criticism helps nobody either.

That’s the one. Thanks for the tip! It only shows up on my iPad Mini 6th gen. Not on phone, iPad Air, MacBook Pros… seems to be a downloaded exploit, meaning it appears when I’m downloading certain PDFs, but then it won’t go away without either your solution, or having Apple Support share my screen. As I’ve said, they’ll escalate my case if it appears again and I get them a screenshot.

Can I add to this with my experience and it might make some sense. This only appeared on my iPad on the 3rd January 2025 which is a relevant date. We changed from copper wire to fibre optic cable on that day. As soon as we were up and running the little icon appeared. Is it possible this means you are connected to fibre optic network not cable anymore? Just my four pennies worth. Hope this helps.

Just wondering if someone got any definitive answers on this?

my symbol has been there for 3 days now and is pulsing light blue/dark blue.

(not sure that if its downloading or syncing it should take that long?)