Phone freezes up every time I open Messages

Hello oliviawcooney, You can check a couple of things

• You can restart Messages by closing (moving app up to close) and then restarting app
• Restart your iPhone by shutting it down and restarting.
• ReEnable Messages in Settings > Messages > slide Off > Wait a few minutes and slide back on.
• Do you have many unwanted, unread messages in Messages? You can in Settings > Messages History > change the options from Keep Forever > to Delete in 30 Days to clean out very old and no longer need messages.

update: so my wife's iMessages on her iPhone 15 started to hang again shortly after we did the logout/login from iCloud, so it really did not fix it permanently. She called Apple and Apple support asked her to reset the network/VPN settings by doing the following: Go to Settings -> General -> scroll down to "Transfer and Reset iPhone" and select -> click on "Reset" -> Select "Reset Network Settings". The assumption was that it might be freezing due to VPN settings messing up the network communication/DNS settings/.... After she did the reset of the network settings the issue disappeared.

When I had the issue on my phone I was using a VPN (Nord VPN) now and then which might have caused it as well on my phone, but not sure what I did to get rid of the issue on my phone. I tried many different things at the time but maybe it disappeared when I turned the VPN on and off. NordVPN might leaving something behind that messes up the network communication for iMessages.

I had a similar problem. My Phone, facetime and messages app were not working. Whenever I clicked on these apps, my phone screen will go black. When I tried to access these app settings through the Settings app, my phone would just freeze. All my pther apps were working on my phone. I however could not receive any calls or messages on my phone. I just left the Upper East Side Apple Store where I was initially told I would need to change part of the motherboard to solve this issue and would cost me $449. I gave push back and wanted to know the cause of this issue since I did nothing wrong. I opted for the alternative to restore my IOS 17.5.1 software after reading similar complaints online. I had also visited T-Mobile and they also thought i was having a software issue. If your phne is glitching, go to the Apple store and request a software reset (you'd need to have a phone backup fyi). But def do this and don't be potentially scammed into paying for hardware damages or changes you did not cause!! Apple please educate your genius bar staff about this very common issue. It seems most places don't know there are major issues with the new IOS.

Solution for me: Look in your address book for an entry with many (hundreds) of telephone numbers, such as SPAM or Mr Number or some other blocked list. Deleted that address book listing that holds so many numbers. After doing that, my similar problem was solved.

Hi all, i have had this issue since immediately upon upgrading to iOS 17.5.1 and has persisted to current latest version. Extensive apple store visits and tech support calls yielded no help and no result. Then the 5th technical support person I talked to said, Oh, let's just try one more thing: try deleting your VPN configurations (Settings -> General -> VPN & Device Management). This seems to have fixed it. It was interesting to discover that I deleted several VPNs with no effect, then deleted a certain one and the Settings app crashed. But then when re-opened, it was working.

I am going to try adding my VPNs back today, hope this fix helps y'all however.

I should note that I have used 1.1.1.1, WireGuard, and Mullvad VPN clients on the same phone at various times. The configuration I deleted was a Mullvad config for WireGuard app, unused for over a year, which I installed before there was a mullvad client available.

I had a similar problem, and was able to get it un-stuck. Some forums said to go to Settings > Messages and toggle iMessage off and back on again.

When I tried to do that, clicking Messages just crashed the Settings app.

I was able to make progress by logging out my AppleID and then logging back in again. It seems to be working now, but I suspect my iPhone 13s is starting to not be powerful enough for 2024.

Solution: The freezing of the iMessage recipient number entry may be caused by an entry in your address book that has many (hundreds) of telephone numbers. For some people, it is a contact they named "SPAM." For me, it was a legacy contact from the app called "Mr Number", which I stopped using years ago. Removing that contact solved the problem for me!

I had the same issue. Solved it backing up the phone on my local macbook, rebooting the phone and restoring it again. Was a bit of work for different apps after restore but finally everything worked.

Myself and my wife had the same issues on our iPhone 15s. I tried all the recommendations, multiple times and only logging out of iCloud and logging back in stopped the issue (at least for now). Hopefully this will be addressed soon in a patch, it has a major impact since we are using our phones a lot for texting during the day and many are time sensitive.

I have found that logging out and back in to iCloud on my iphone seems to work. Updating to later iOS 17.6.1 did not work.

I had the same problem. I turned off iCloud syncing for messages, then turned it on again and clicked the "sync now" button. It seems to be working ok now.

So this issues has been happening to me for the last two days personally and I was on the developer beta so what fixed it so far was completely restarting my phone back to the latest software through the computer which is ios 17.6.1 as of today.

FIX : Agree to icloud update terms solves it. This happened to me after ios 18.1.1 update text not working screen blackouts etc

I have had this happen this past week. I went and I had to agree to the updated terms and conditions and within a minute texts from even 2 days ago started coming through. Maybe try that?

I had the same issues and it was resolved✅

either you contact (iphone support) to go through some procedures or try updating the iphone to latest version using MacBook & cable charger.