Ipad really slow after update to iOS 9

Settings is demanding program? Show text list is very difficult For A5 processor? Or first show keyboard? or call list?

it grieves.

McDuff14, I agree the iPad mini is designed to run iOS 6. Unfortunately Apple refused to serve 6.1.6 to iPad. The latest version served was 6.1.4 and that has the SSL bug. iOS 6.1.6 was the patch for the SSL bug.

Posted in error. Please disregard. My apologies.

I just had a good 3-4 second delay waiting for the on screen keyboard to come up. "Upgrading" to iOS 9 has RUINED my iPad 3. After losing wifi for weeks after iOS 7 "upgrade", I swore I wouldnt do it again but app requirements essentially forced me to cross my fingers. Apps resist swipe close, HORRIBLE lag typing makes Safari basically UNUSABLE, apps CRASHING left and right. I'm screaming in the hope that it saves others from turning their perfectly operating iPad into a piece of junk. This is what made me switch to Apple five years ago from a Dell PC. The first four and a half years were heaven. it just works wasnt just a slogan, it was truth. Whatever the reason, Apple is NO LONGER the company it once was and their products are no longer so very exceptional as to warrant their premium prices. This is more than forced obsolenice. Anyone disagree? Look at the iPad PRO issues out of the gate. Such a shame. Really questioning whether it is worth it to continue in the Apple sphere with its pricey adapters and peripherals. Mistakes happen but this is an undeniable pattern of issues that proves, conclusively, that Apple products, hard and soft, are not what they once were.

BTW, before anyone jumps down my throat, I have tried all of the suggested fixes including a clean re-install. Hours of wasted time with no improvement.

Try my own re-install procedure, instead.

I just upgraded another family members 16 GB iPad 2 and it is running very well on iOS 9.1. It was upgraded from iOS 7.1.2, too!

This is the FIFTH older iPad that I have had to help someone upgrade and my third Pad 2 upgrade to iOS 9.

I do not know how all of you have been upgrading/updating your iPad 2's, but this is beginning to be either user error or something user related than iPad or iOS related.

I am NO rocket scientist and I don't have a PH D in computers or computer science, just more knowledgable than most, but I have upgraded 5 older iPads and NOT one has had the knds of issues eveyone posting in these forums has been reporting.

I don't know.

Anyhoo...

I have something new you should try as this has made my iPad 2 and 3 even faster.

Here is my own restore procedure that has already worked, sucessfully, for a couple of iPad 2 users, so far!

I have done this and my iPad 2 and 3 are working like new, " out of the box" units!

First, connect your iPad to USB and sync and backup your iPad to iTunes (make sure your iTunes is up to date).

Then disconnect/eject your iPad from the computer.

From just the iPad, in the Settings App under the General setting, look in the right column for Reset option, then erase and reset your iPad to completely erase your iPad and then, again, from the iPad, set it up as a new iPad setup to factory "out of the box" operation.

Then reconnect your iPad to the computer and make sure to cancel the syncing, by tapping the small X to the left in the top center iTunes display box.

iTunes should detect your iPad. If iTunes begins to try and sync, again, cancel the sync.

Select Restore from Backup instead and pick your last backup to restore back to your iPad.

Once the restore is complete, finish setting up the iPad and let it sync back to iTunes you can either cancel the sync, again or let it backup, again.

Then disconnect the iPad.

Do one hard reset of your iPad by holding down both the Home and sleep/wake buttons simultaneously until your iPad goes to black and restarts with Apple logo, then release the buttons.

Once your iPad is back to the Home screen,

In the Settings App under the General tab, to the right under Spotlight sesrch, try disabling the search under apps that really do not need a search, like some games, remotes, apps that really do not need to be searched, etc., to reduce the list for Spotlight to search.

Try turning on Reduced Motion.

This is found in the Settings App in the General tab the left panel.

In the right panel look under Accessibility, the look for Reduce Motion and turn this feature "On".

You should see an appreciable performance increase on all iPad 2, 3 and 4 models.

In the Settings App under the General Tab, in the right column, look for Background App Refresh and turn this setting to "off".

If you purchased any music from iTunes, you will need to redownload that content back to your iPad for playing directly from your iPad and not from Apple Music servers.

Also, if your iPad contained a lot of images in the Photos app, these will take time to regenerate the original AND thumbnail images themselves inside of the Photos app when you first launch it.

Good Luck!

My ipad2 has been struggling since iOS 8. iOS 9 did not came with performance improvements for me at all, in fact it came with stability issues. iOS 9.1 is little better but the amount of crashes is still a lot.

Responding to this tread is just barely possible on the ipad2. If I open another tab or accidentally hit the home button? It's over. Time to start again. I did restarts and restores via iTunes, I have the reduced motion on for quite some time now and disabled background refresh. Same with spotlight. I even changed the background lol.

It's still slow and unstable and I only use my iPad 2 for the most basis tasks, witch apparently it can't even do that anymore.

And yes I know.. whining and complaining does not do anything but it used to be such a nice device to use. Same story with my fathers iPad but he does not know this forum. I am going to wait for yet another update, but I am doing that since the introduction of iOS 8.

If you use iTunes, at least, try my restore procedure.

At the very least, you will see some improvement and you will gain some free storage space back.

Good Luck!

Thank you for trying to help me.

A few questions to be sure:

''First, connect your iPad to USB and sync and backup your iPad to iTunes (make sure your iTunes is up to date).

Then disconnect/eject your iPad from the computer.''

Is it useful to backup my iPad? I only got one app (dolphin browser) and no other files like photo's. There is nothing to lose for me. however I am going to make the backup as you suggested.

''From just the iPad, in the Settings App under the General setting, look in the right column for Reset option, then erase and reset your iPad to completely erase your iPad and then, again, from the iPad, set it up as a new iPad setup to factory "out of the box" operation.''

So set up the iPad as a new device like one would without a computer? (In my previous post I said restore, but I meant set up as a new device.)

''Then reconnect your iPad to the computer and make sure to cancel the syncing, by tapping the small X to the left in the top center iTunes display box.''

So I reconnect my iPad again before configuring it right? In iTunes you can prevent to atomaticly sync devices in the settings btw 😉. So now I restore my backup, and finish the configuration. After that I am going to reset my iPad and perform the usual tricks again (turning on Reduced Motion etc)

I honesty don't see the point in all this because I did similar things before, but I am going to give this one last try, because this is now becoming much more work than the old windows days.

I really don't know why I continue to post on apple forums at all but here I go:

To make it clear: IOS8 and IOS9 are both noticeable slower than IOS7. Following MichelPM advices to disable any unnecessary services and visual effects helps making the ipad a bit quicker again. Howevever, performance won't be near IOS7 or IOS6 level.

Right now there is no way going back from 9.1 to any older Version of IOS. However, there is a method to go back from 9.0x to IOS6 for ipad 2 and some other old devices (not mini as far as I know) under certain circumstances.

When I was using IOS7 I already had everything setup as MichelPM suggests and I can say that IOS9 is terrible. It feels like my ipad mini has lost 30-50% of its original performance running IOS7. And after using IOS9 for a couple of days so far I can also state that safari crashes way more often than before the update to IOS9. Only battery live seems the same. Overall updating to IOS9 was a decision I deeply regret and I would go back to IOS7 immediately if I could.

Since Apple wants you to buy new ipads I strongly doubt any future update will change those performance issues. Maybe the keyboard lag, at least I hope so.

Apple and some other people may argue that since the ipad 2 and mini are such old devices they naturally get slower with new updates. But considering what little benefits IOS8 and IOS9 bring to those devices, there is no excuse for the loss of perfomance in the wake of updates. That is why many people and I feel cheated by Apple. Of course security updates are important and it's nice getting updates at all but they should not slow down your device.

I confirm and stand by that which was said.

Alrighty then...

I am replying to report, yet, ANOTHER family member's successful iPad 2 upgrade from iOS 8 to iOS 9.1.

The two other iPad 2s I upgraded were previously running iOS 7.1.2.

This makes three iPad 2 models, my own iPad 3 and a close friend's iPad 4.

ALL are running very well with iOS 9.1 folks.

This makes my success rate 5 for 5 everyone!

ALL upgraded, initially, through the computer and iTunes. NO Over The Air WiFi downloads and upgrading/updating.

I do not know how everyone posting here did their initial Pad 2 upgrades/updates, but clearly I am doing something properly that no one else is doing.

Apple is not forcing me or my family and family members or my friends to chuck their iPad 2, 3 or 4 models for a new iPad purchase!

Every one I helped or actually did the iOS 9 upgrade for has had NO major performance issues and these older iPads ARE running almost like they were new right "out of the Apple iPad box"!

They are working real well.

I took over my wife's iPad 2 ( I am a proud owner of a new iPad Pro, but still want to use our older iPads to travel with) and it's running very well and my Wife has taken over my iPad 3 and it's running better than when I had it and she hasn't complained once about issues with iOS 9!

I am at a total loss to explain all of these iPad 2 issues,when I have NOT had any issues worth noting or posting here.

I really think it's the upgrading over Wifi that is THE REAL cause of all the iPad 2,3 and 4 major performance issues.

This is not a case of Apple releasing an iOS upgrade designed to purposely cripple older iPad models and get older customers to purchase new or "newer" hardware.

That is, definitely, not my experiences to date!

First of all, please do not compare ipad 2/mini with ipad 3 or even ipad 4. The latter sport double the amount of memory and different cpus than ipad 2/mini. I really don't know how you can be content with the performance of your ipad 2 on Ios9 but consider yourself lucky that you are.

In my experience installing the update through Itunes does not help performance at all.

Everyone has to decide for himself whether he wants to update or not. You can either listen to all the people who report about performance issues of ios9 in this forum (and all over the internet) or listen to one single guy who claims that there is no difference in performance between ios7 and ios9 on ipad 2. ;^)

edit: The only reason I can imagine why you might think that ios9 is as fast as IOS7 is that you had all those unnecessary services and visual effects enabled on IOS7. Whereas on IOS9 you disabled them which might make IOS9 as fast as IOS7 but only because you stripped IOS9 down a lot more than IOS7.

If you had used IOS7 with all your advices you could never argue in favour of IOS9.

Just spent some time today trying MichelPM suggestions. The first hour it seemed normal but then the browser crashed again. Everything is choppy again. It's borked for older devices I guess. (Apple is not doing this on purpose I am sure but they really need to step up their quality for old devices)

I am seeing the same reports on many english forums, dutch forums youtube comments and here so I am not alone. Maybe 9.2 will be beter but probably will break another thing.

Something to keep in mind if you buy a new iPad. Someday it will be old, and if the performance is bad apple wil not let you downgrade.

No.

SInce iOS 7, I had to turn down or off all of the motion graphics.

Neither the iPad 2, iPad 3 and iPad 4 models have powerful enough CPU or graphics power to handle those effects from the moment those effects were introduced.

I have even turned these effects off on my iPad Pro to keep it ss speedy as possible, but left the background app refresh active.

I am used to not having to deal with all of the fancy eye candy on my iPads.

I want optimal performance out of my iDevices, NOT cool and neat animated graphics that suck up CPU, graphics and RAM resources.