iPad Message App Slow Response

I went into Settings, and Messages from there, and changed the "Keep messages" from Forever to 30 days. It was slow the first time clicking into conversations with lots of messages, and you have to click each thread individually to get it to delete old messages; but after the first time it's running much faster getting into threads.

I also have this very same issue. It starts doing this if I try to delete an individual message thread in messages. I then have to reboot the device and the deleted message thread reappears (does not delete). It works fine as long as I don't try to delete an individual text message thread after a fresh reboot. As a matter of fact, I have been unable to delete any individual text message threads in messages since this issue started.

This all started with one of the IOS 8 updates.

iPad Air Wi-Fi, iOS 8.3

Try signing out of iMessage on your Mac, your iPhone & your iPad.

Then sign back in, in the same order.

Also, wait a while between signing in to each device & verify that each are working before signing into the next.

i appreciate the advice, but this did not work.

I am experiencing the exact same issue as well. Hoping there is a fix for this. Just started after 8.3 update.

Very similar issues here as well. Everything worked fine until the update to 8.3 Very very slow response time. When starting a new message searching for contacts is incredibly slow.

I am having this problem as well. It developed with iOS 8.1 and has been getting worse. 8.3 is slow to a complete crawl. I have an iPad 4th gen. Whole iPad lags, but Messages is the worst of it. Message count is wrong too, keeps saying wrong number of unread messages, and doesn't know when I've already read messages on my iPhone or computer.

I saw a YouTube clip about resetting the Network Settings to fix this, though I haven't tried it and remain skeptical. It seems more like a memory allocation problem in my case (hence my iPad being sluggish in general), maybe my iCloud data is too beefy for this three year old iPad. Would sure love to hear about a fix though.

I tried reseting my network settings and that did not help at all. I'm going to try restoring the iPad next chance I get to see if that fixes it.

Yeah, I decided to do the same. I turned off iMessages, did a Network Settings Reset, turned on iMessages (after the reboot) and same problem persists. Have also tried logging in and out of iCloud but it doesn't work.

Please let me know if restoring your iPad fixes it, thanks.

First I tried restoring the software on my iPad and then restored the data and settings from a backup. Same issue. Finally I did a restore and setup up the iPad as new and started from scratch and the issue went away. It is definitely a drastic measure but Messages is a big part of how I use the iPad so it was an acceptable trade off for me. Hopefully Apple will figure out a better fix than having to restore to defaults and starting from scratch.

I did a full restore on my iphone 6 (5 months old) and the restore solved the problem...for a few days. Back just as sluggish as before and when writing a message the letter lag terribly. I have this problem on both my Iphone 6 (IOS 8.3) and my old ipad (IOS 8.1). I have tried turning imessage off in messages app in the settings. Makes no difference. My contacts is also having a problem, (on Iphone) its like the page is on a "reload-loop". Hope this gets fixed soon.

Also having issue for past two updates on iPad Air with 64gb have tried reset signing in and out and no help iPhone and Mac work fine

I have the exact same problem with my iPad 3. Worked great until a couple of updates ago but it's horrible now. I see very noticeable lag on several apps but iMessage is almost completely unusable on it. We have many Apple devices (phones 5c,5s, and 6, iPad 2 & 3) and it is only the iPad 3 having this issue. I have mixed feelings about not being the only one experiencing this.. on one hand I am glad it's not likely my device... on the other hand it seems as if Apple has a pretty serious underlying issue to resolve.. and who knows how long that will take.