iOS 10 Black Screen Spinning Wheel

It's due to a date bug (Dec 2nd) causing local notifications to crash Springboard. For some people, Headspace is the only app they use with local notifications so deleting that was a work around. It won't work by itself if you have other apps with local notifications. Installing iOS 11.2 is the correct solution.

Link to official support page:

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch unexpectedly restarts - Apple Support

I started having this problem last night after plugging my phone into the charger. The battery was low (35%) so once it was charging, the phone decided to update some apps. From that moment forward, my phone would do the black screen with spinning wheel about every 3 minutes - almost too fast for me to even get a successful backup. The phone would also get quite hot. So I suspected that it was related to an app update.

Restore in iTunes worked for me - the phone stopped misbehaving. BUT soon after restoring from backup, as soon as all the apps had finished downloading & installing again, the problem returned (restoring from backup does not restore the apps - just app placeholders and app settings - the apps then need to download/install again from the App Store). So from that point I knew it was an app causing the issue. This makes sense, because the problem started after a bunch of apps updated the night before. So I deleted about 20 apps (non-Apple ones like Shazam, Spotify, various airline/airpoints apps, about half of what I could see - then I stopped to see if the problem had gone. And yes, the problem had gone away. So I did a Restore from backup again, with the intention of reproducing the problem (and then uninstalling apps one by one, waiting a few minutes between each one to see if the problem had gone away). But this time I had a better idea and when the apps were reinstalling, I quickly tapped on any apps that were downloading/installing, to pause them, and the problem has not returned. This means one of two things:

A) the problem is either Heatmiser (app to control my central heating), Shazam, Headspace, or Trello (the only ones I managed to catch before they installed)

B) In the 18 hours or so between the time when I put my phone on charge at night, and when the problem went away, an app developer released a bug-fix for the problem they created 18 hours earlier, and after restoring my phone, perhaps it downloaded the latest version which fixed the issue. E.g. whatever app was at fault, got updated during the time I was messing around with my restores (but it must've happened within a 15 minute window, so quite a big coincidence).

My point is, this can be an iOS issue, but it can also be an app issue. My symptom was regular black screen with spinning wheel followed by asking me for passcode or Touch ID (this means it's not a full reboot - the iPhone will not accept touch ID after a reboot) - the phone would get hot - and during each reset cycle the phone would make that chime it makes when you plug in the charger. Any text or email you were writing, would be lost during the reset. Full power offs and stuff did not help at all of course.

So, if you have this issue, before you erase/restore everything, you might want to first try:

1) do a full backup in iTunes - make sure you tick "Encrypted backups" as this will mean that iTunes stores all your passwords and some other extra stuff in the backup file. It means when you restore, you'll have less work to do, to get your phone back to its original state. BTW, I noticed that even if the phone did its reset thing in the middle of an iTunes backup, iTunes seemed to be able to complete the backup after the reset finished. But out of paranoia I kept trying until I managed to time it right and get a full backup between resets.

2) delete about half of your 3rd party apps from the phone (or if you like, delete them one at a time and just wait between resets). If you can't be bothered staring at your phone to see if it's still resetting, just open up Messages and type in an SMS to someone but don't hit send. Then when you come back to your phone you can tell if it's reset, because it will be at the home screen and the unsent SMS text will be lost. Once you find the bad app, maybe contact the app developer and tell them what's happening, or try reinstalling it to see if you can reliably make the problem reappear and disappear by installing then reinstalling the app. If you get to zero 3rd party apps and the problem hasn't gone away, THEN...

3) so you couldn't fix the problem by finding a flawed app... so maybe it is an iOS issue. In that case, Erase/Restore via iTunes (assuming you backed up in step 1!!) then Restore from Backup. If the problem is still present then in my mind it has to be an actual iOS bug (which some of the first original posters in this thread experienced with iOS10), or an app bug that hasn't been fixed yet.

I will edit/post again when I later have some more time to unpause the install of those remaining 3 apps that are paused, but right now I don't have time to risk it as I need my phone for work for the next few hours.

iOS 11.2 is out now which fixes this bug.

Settings > General > Update

Hey everyone! So I had this same issue. Every time my 6 auto locked or I locked it, I would have to keep pressing the home button to get it to unlock. Backed up my phone on my MBP and then re-installed iOS 10.0.2 -- problem solved! I restored my phone from my back-up and the problem returned shortly after all my apps were re-installed which made me think one of the 200 apps on my phone is causing a problem. I went through one-by-one starting with emoji apps and voila! The app causing this problem was the Emoji Xpress app. Hope everyone has the same luck as I do!

Yesterday I uninstalled the Outlook app due to the fact that I started to suspect it might cause this behaviour, too. It regularly happened when I was using the app, up to the point where it's almost reproducible. Since it also runs in the background, random crashes when I was using other apps (and also when the phone was locked and just lying on the table) could therefore be linked to Outlook from my point of view. A general memory leak could also be an explanation, of course. But then it should affect all iOS 10 users, shouldn't it?

However, I'm only referring to the first problem the OP mentioned: sudden black screen with white spinning wheel and after approximately 10 seconds the "Touch ID or Enter Passcode" screen. Some people here seem to have a somewhat different issue...

Outlook seems to have been the culprit for me. I removed it and went back to stock Mail. The issue, which was spinning wheel then lock screen occurring 10-20 times per day, disappeared immediately.

Well the problem for me on iPhone 6 seems pretty obvious now. iOS 9 was solid with outlook installed. And the deadly wheel spin started happening right after iOS 10 updates. It last for about several weeks now with around 5 black screen spins per day. Just for the sake of it I uninstalled outlook and there has been no spin wheels for more than a week now.

It really seems there is something wrong here in between iOS 10 and outlook. iOS 9 was solid but once one 10 it started happening. Really not sure who to blame here, while outlook can cause this issue but iOS itself should be able to manage the situation.

If I still have a change I would rollback to iOS 9 until this gets resolved.

Hello,

Just wanted to add my two cents to this on what has worked for me so far. It might help other folks.

The two apps I had that created this crashing scenario were Outlook and Habitify. Uninstalling either of these would rectify the problem. However, it seemed more like an OS issue. I stumbled across another post (I can't remember where) that suggested turning off iCloud for Notes, then turning it back on so that it can resync. Instead I did it for all the iCloud services (mail, reminder, etc). This helped resolve the problem.

Another thing that the Outlook team suggested was to reset the Outlook account settings under Outlook > settings > accounts > reset account. This seemed to work as well but I'm not sure if it was coincidental.

Anyhow. I'm happy to report that I have had no crashes for several days and I can use both of the apps listed above. Hope this may help somebody if your scenario fits mine exactly.

With the latest update 10.1.1 and the latest outlook app update the issue is gone now. At least in my case. Previously, disabling the outlook notifications did provide a temporary workaround.

Br

Koitalel

I can confirm the 11.2 update fixed my wife's iPhone 6. But the steps required are somewhat ridiculous in that Apple says you must individual disable notifications for each and every app you have, then apply the update, and then re-enable the notifications you want. I did that and it worked, but I wish they would just release an update that works, without requiring all that tedious labor to get it to work.

My 6S started doing this in the middle of the night. About every minute or so. It woke me up because each time it did the soft reset it reconnected to the power and buzzed. I tried a hard reset and that didn’t do anything so I just turned off my phone and went back to sleep. Woke up this morning to turn it on hoping it was all a dream, but no 🤔

After many interruptions I finally found your post and started turning off the notifications app by app. It did the soft reset one time during the process, but haven’t done it since. I have disabled all notifications and updated to 11.2. Now only have the notifications for phone and messages turned on and am happy to say that it appears to be working. Thank You!!

I had this same problem every minute or so my iPhone 6 would go to the black screen with the spinning wheel for a few seconds than it would lock my iPhone it would vibrate and ask me to enter my passcode. I couldn’t do anything on my phone cause this kept happening. I updated my iPhone to the latest update iOS 11.2 and this solved the problem. I haven’t had the same issue yet for half a day now.

As has been posted numerous times earlier in this thread the fix is to update to iOS 11.2.

Settings > General > Update

If you can't update because of the spinning wheel, then set your date manually back to the end of November.

You can reset your date to automatic after the update completely finishes.

I had the same issue but disabling the outlook notifications completely stopped the black screens. I love the outlook app and my life would be incomplete without it. Try that.