Why is there a Spinning Wheel Most of the Time on my Home Screen After the 7.1 Update?

I too have this issue (iPhone 5 - iOS 7.1.2). Toggling airplane mode temporarily fixes it, easier than hard reset or resetting network settings. But still, problem is sporadic and persists. One day I left my phone in the "spinning" state overnight while charging and on wifi. I woke up in the morning with the same spinning wheel...Seems every iOS instance has something...off about it. Can't wait to see what bugs iOS 8 has in store for us

I have a similar issue and here's a credible answer I found in another group:

The Cause

I can reproduce this problem consistently on iOS 7.1.1. Just go into App Store and click the "update all" button in the updates tab. When you exit to your home screen, the activity indicator will spin in the status bar incessantly. Since the code has been wedged into the wrong state, the only way to get rid of the activity indicator is to power down your phone and boot it back up.

The Reason

This is caused by Apple developers poor programming. They properly show it when apps begin to update:

[UIApplication sharedApplication].networkActivityIndicatorVisible = YES;

But they fail to turn it off when the apps finish updating:

[UIApplication sharedApplication].networkActivityIndicatorVisible = NO;

The way their Cocoa Touch framework is written makes it very easy for amateur developers to make this mistake, including Apple's own internal iOS development team. It's very hard to manage nested network operations that need to show the activity indicator. The correct interface for managing the activity indicator would have been to create a stack. Any time the indicator is needed, an object would be pushed onto the stack. When the operation is complete, the object would be popped from the stack. Once the stack is empty, the indicator should disappear.

I have this exact same problem too, and it seems to have only appeared since the most recent update.. Symptoms are the same with everyone's and hard resets do not permanently fix this situation. And no, to those people saying there are updates, there isn't. My updates are manual, and I always update apps the minute they become available. And my last update was several days ago, to which this phenomenon has once again occurred (several days after my last app update, which was for the game Bike Race). I hope this is fixed by Apple in either another iOS 7 update or in the new iOS 8.

worked for me too thanks

7.1.2 update seems to have taken care of this issue

Not for me...

I've got this problem too, on a brand-new iPhone 5S. The 4S I upgraded from did not have this problem and its apps and settings were almost identical. I've tried all the suggested fixes - all app pushes and background refresh is off. Restarting the phone with either the normal power off or the hard reset - or resetting the network settings - solves the issue, but only temporarily. Updating to 7.1.2 also temporarily solved the issue, but likely only because it restarted during the process.

I can confirm that the issue exists both while on WiFi and while on LTE. After one hour of leaving it charging and set to never auto-lock, the only cellular data usage has occurred under System Services. The services listed are Networking, Media Services, and DNS Services.

I'm starting to wonder if it could be carrier specific. I'm with Telus.

IM gonna guess its being caused by jailbreaking cause it doesent happen to my itouch 5 on clean os i sispect jailbreak bug or malware constantly accessing network spyware

And your guess would be wrong. Not jailbroken here, nor are numerous others. Ensure you read the discussion entirely before "guessing".

The advice to Reset Network Settings has worked the best for me. Because the usual hard reset that I do on my device (iPhone 5S - v7.1.2 - carrier is AT&T) only works temporarily. The wheel only persists on my home screen. Not when I open any other app. And that led me to suspect it is something that Apple is doing in the background - and therefore doesn't want it to interfere or slow down with any other action or process a user may be trying to do. But it seems to happening so often lately. Which may be a result of Apple doing testing before releasing iOS 8 - who knows.

I have done the reset network settings, too. It is only a temporary fix. The problem is, I am convinced, linked to Safari.

Agreed. Seems to be no consistent or permanent fix. I discovered a new one that has held up today. I unchecked automatic carrier, let it search carriers, then select my carrier. Shouldn't be an issue until I want to roam And have to switch to auto.

I have a brand new iPhone 5s with 7.1.2 installed and this has started happening to me as well...very irritating. At first I thought it was trying to update to 8 without my consent ( I want to wait)...but I don't think it's that. I have just deleted Skype because I noticed in the Status app that it was doing something in the background that I had not authorized.

I have usually found that when i see the spinning wheel, if i look in my iTunes store and go to the more on bottom right, i usually have music downloads trying to load onto my phone. Sometimes it could be apps downloading as well. these seem to take a long time depending on how many playlists you have selected to install. Because the music is coming from my icloud it takes quite a while for them to finish installing.