I have a grey bar covering the text entry area in messaging.

Interestingly enough, that thread does not contain any solutions, just random things to try:

• They don't use iMessage and when they updated it forced them to sign in, so they signed out. Then Audio message was on, so they signed into iMessage again, turned it off, then signed out. What?
• Turn "Show Subject Field" on and off again.
• Turn on Character Count.
• Turn off Raise to Listen.
• If running, Force Quit the Camera app.

Or just double-tap and swipe away Messages, then restart the app...to workaround a pretty obvious bug that Apple has thus far has not bothered to acknowledge (no surprise there) or fix.

I have had this same problem countless times. I reported it weekly during the months i was using the iOS 9 beta. As we can see by the lack of Apples interest, the iOS 9 release is still buggy. They just didn't seem to care to really look over the bugs and fix them it seems like as this was present in every better release of iOS 9. The only way i have seen you can fix it is to close out of messages, double tap the home button and close messages all together by swiping up. After re-opening the messages app, it should be gone. What i have noticed it is, is the grey bar from voice messages that gets created once sending one. For what ever reason at times it appears after i have accidentally touched the voice button or turned my phone into landscape mode. Even if i hit the voice button by accident, it won't go away till i hard close the messages application. Hope this helps.

No problem at all. Yeah i'm sure small things like this are hard to find, but i have had the same issue and it's annoying. But it seems to have gotten better for me, i haven't seen it yet, but i also think that over all the submissions bug wise to Apple that just myself did during the beta and others experiencing the same problem, you would think those wouldn't be in the full version. But not a single bug i reported was fixed and is still in the full release such as this one we have seen. So what was the point of the beta? As nothing changed for me from beta to full release.

What user troubleshooting do you suggest? I've experienced the same issue on an iPhone 6 running iOS 9. Upgraded on release day, have erased all content and settings once; the issue happened before performing the full erase, and has happened afterwards. It occurs at random intervals, and with various conversations in Messages; some longer conversations with lengthy history, some with only a handful of messages in the conversation. Leaving the app with a single Home button press, then returning, does not resolve; thus far the only thing that fixes, as WESTIA indicated, is to double-tap the Home button to open the app switcher and swipe away Messages to force quit the app, then reopen Messages.

Well I'm sorry I bothered to try and help. You may go ahead and find your own solutions from here on out. And by the way, Apple does not participate here, which you were told when you signed up: this is a user-to-user technical support forum manned by volunteers.

Thanks! Doing this as you suggested, "The only way i have seen you can fix it is to close out of messages, double tap the home button and close messagesiall together by swiping up. After re-opening the messages app, it should be gone." Did the trick.

Interestingly enough, I've found another thread over on iPhone Hardware that appears to have a solution. Read: Iphone 6 gray bar blocking text box after ios 9 update??

I don't have this on my devices, so it's not a widespread bug if it is a bug at all. What user troubleshooting have you done to try and get rid of it?

Interesting. Thanks for the information, hopefully iOS 9 becomes more stable and bug free sooner rather than later.

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Glad i could help. It is an annoying bug, hopefully at some point it gets fixed. But yet again, it's one of many bugs in the public release of iOS9 that was in the beta as a bug. Good job Apple.

Thanks worked great!