iOS 18.3 update causing unexpected shutdown on my iPhone

Since the last 2 updates before 18.3 my iPhone 13 Pro Max (bought new from Apple) keeps freezing. Now I updated it to 18.3 and it’s worse. It freezes and I have to close the apps. It is draining my battery badly. What is going on with Apple. Disappointed. I have never had such issues before. Can you fix this asap!

I wanted to share my frustrating and time-consuming experience with the iOS 18.3 update, which led to my iPhone unexpectedly shutting down. It has now been over nine continuous hours, and I am still waiting for my iPhone to fully restore from an iCloud backup.

How It Started

Immediately after updating to iOS 18.3, my iPhone started restarting on its own. Within a short time, it completely refused to turn on. I attempted several recovery mode restarts and tried to update or restore the device, but I lost count of how many failed attempts I made.

Endless Restore Attempts & Errors

• First, I used Finder to attempt an update, but my iPhone restarted in the middle of the process and then stopped showing up on my Mac.

• I received error 1403 or 2406 (can’t remember exactly).

• I had to disconnect and reconnect the iPhone countless times, trying both update and restore options, but nothing worked. The phone kept restarting into recovery mode, then eventually became unresponsive.

• After 4 hours of frustration, my iPhone was effectively bricked.

Trying an Alternative Approach: Terminal & Homebrew

The next morning, I searched for alternative solutions and, with the help of ChatGPT, I discovered the possibility of restoring the iPhone via Terminal. Here’s what I tried:

• Granting Terminal Full Disk Access

• Installing Homebrew & adding it to PATH

• Installing libimobiledevice (required for iPhone restore)

• Restarting usbmuxd (the iPhone connection service)

• Manually restarting USB services and reinstalling dependencies

• Restarting both my Mac and iPhone multiple times

Despite all these efforts, nothing worked. The iPhone still wasn’t detected, and the Terminal method failed.

Finally, a Partial Success…

Feeling defeated, I went back to Finder and repeatedly tried Update and Restore until, finally, I was able to perform a restore. At this point, I was hopeful the nightmare was over.

• The device was erased, and I started setting it up as a new iPhone.

• But then the same issue happened again—random restarts, just like after installing iOS 18.3.

At this point, I was on the verge of giving up and considering a visit to the Apple Store or even switching to Android out of frustration. However, I decided to give it one last try, repeating the entire restore process from scratch.

Finally, after yet another full restore, my iPhone booted up properly. I had to go through the entire setup process again (Face ID, Apple ID, settings), but thankfully, my iCloud backup restored most of my data.

Final Thoughts: Apple Needs Better Quality Control

While my phone is finally working, I still have hours of waiting for all my apps and data to restore, and I may need to set up certain apps manually.

This was a horrifying experience, and it raises serious questions about Apple’s QA process. Are they properly testing updates on real devices before releasing them? Do they check compatibility with different iOS versions and device models before pushing updates to the public?

This iOS 18.3 experience was beyond frustrating, and I sincerely hope Apple takes more care with future updates.

Has anyone got to comeover the iOS 18.3 issue? share your experience

I updated my iPhone 16 promax to 18.3 last night and this afternoon the exact same thing happened. Definitely the IOS

TL;DR Unsuccessful initial update attempt, had to restore phone to factory settings, then

recover from backup. Very painful, time consuming, and worrying. Good luck to you.

We've had the same issue on two different phones, a 13 Pro and a 12 Pro. We were updating via iTunes on Windows. In each case the update takes the phone into update mode, the progress bar just starts to move, then the iTunes app exits and the device is stuck on the Apple logo with just a tiny bit of progress on the progress bar.

1. We reset the device (quick up vol, quick down vol, hold on power button until your finger goes numb and finally you get the Apple logo) to get to recovery mode. Tried to update again. No luck.
2. Tried with a different cable. Tried with a different USB port. Nothing worked. Always got stuck in the same place. Tried restore vs update. Nothing. Always stopped very early in the process.
3. Tried a different computer. Didn't work initially.
4. Rebooted second computer and again, restored rather than updated because at this point we just wanted the phone back to working state. That finally worked. The restore worked.
5. We moved the phone back to the original computer with the backup and recovered the settings. Had to reauthorize the phone, prove we were the owners, then iTunes let us select the backup to recover from. Success. Had to redo some settings such as Face ID, but the phone was now at 18.3 and functional.

We had started to look at making an appointment at a Apple Store. But yeah - they use the phone as second factor when you try to sign in so that's not helpful when the phone is broken. So I guess you would have to call.

Luckily it didn't come to that for us.

I suspect the issue is a corrupted firmware image that only some people are "lucky" enough to get when trying to update. The successful recovery was done on a second computer that downloaded the firmware again. Could the first firmware image be corrupted? Maybe. Maybe there is a corrupted image out the in the Content Distribution Network and just a subset of us are getting unlucky enough to pull it initially?

Not only does it seem shutdown, my phone is lagging (sending a text), freezing up in settings and especially not working when I try to change settings in family restrictions for my kids linked phones! It’s very frustrating that just because I updated with 18.3 version on my 14 plus iPhone that I’m experiencing this most basic functions of my phone!

I tried to update to 18.3 on Jan. 28. - iPhone SE, Generation 2. I have two of these phones, for different numbers. They were at 17.2.1 (I think), and both were working fine with my PC and iTunes.

BOTH PHONES LOCKED UP DURING THE UPDATE. They are stuck in the process - with the Apple Logo and a progress bar, about 5% complete (or so).

There was no plugging them back in, the PC nor iTunes recognized them at all. No attempts to reboot or restart the phones had any effect at all. I tried rebooting the PC, restarting iTunes, phones plugged in and unplugged. Nothing works. Help!!!

Hi!bigness1970! I experienced the same issue after updating to iOS 18.3. I upgraded my iPhone 16 yesterday, and the update process was surprisingly fast—only took about 7 minutes. But in the past few hours, my phone also has been shutting down for no reason ..... At first I thought it was a hardware issue,tried to restarts it, no luck and it even gets stuck in a boot loop. I suspect that the rapid installation process may have caused system instability. but now since I fixed it,it's likely a software problem😁.

You can try some of the solutions I found:

1. **Force restart your iPhone** – Press and quickly release the Volume Up button, then the Volume Down button. Hold the Power button until the Apple logo appears.

2. **Reinstall iOS using a computer** – This worked for me, you can see this artical. I used my computer to fix this restart issue , and my iPhone stopped shutting down. You can try the same method.

Also, check out the offcial links here:

If your iPhone is stuck on the Apple logo - Apple Support

Restart your iPhone - Apple Support

If your iPhone won't turn on or is frozen - Apple Support

You can also contact the support team to fix this!(https://support.apple.com)

Hope this helps! 😊

The same thing happened here, and I cannot connect it back. I cannot update or even restore. It's completely died

Pro Max 11

Sure glad Dan Renee left that post as it saved me with a iphone 16 promax. Exactly what happened to me and how it got fixed.

Note to self: don't update your phone the day before a trip

Dude. I'm in Uganda, probably very far away from everyone posting here. It's not his settings. It's iOS 18.3

Immediately after updating, phone doesn't recognise the battery, and it just keeps rebooting with the battery slowly approaching zero. It's not possible that it's a coincidence that this is happening to so many people.

iOS 18.3 update causing unexpected shutdown on my

My IPhone 13 is crashing after the update. News apps are rebooting every 10 seconds. This wasn’t happening on the previous IOS. Please can you fix this.

I haven’t seen that issue, however, after updating to 18.3 yesterday, my charging is rather slow. I started charging at 10pm last night as it was about to die. It’s now the next day, 1/31/25 and my phone is just now at 89% charged. A little over 14hrs and not at 100% charged. Haven’t had this issue prior to this update.

After I tried everything I knew, my computer store worked on my phones for 2 days TO NO AVAIL. At the suggestion of Apple Support, I took the 2 TOTALLY UNRESPONSIVE iPhone SEs to the Geek Squad at BEST BUY! Evidently, they must have some good Apple hardware/software - they had my phones updated and working within a half hour!!! GREAT NEWS! And the cost was $00!!!