Phone freezes up every time I open Messages

This is super frustrating. Matt has repeatedly posted software advice that fixes the issue, as I have also after following his advice. Apple keeps taking those posts down. Shame on Apple….

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!

Upgrading to the public test version of the next release of iOS fixes it. It’s commonly referred to using the second letter of the Greek alphabet.

When I go to open up, Messages, the screen is either frozen or black and when I try to go into settings to fix it and press anything that evolves the messages, my screen freezes on the settings too.

Update: it was fixed temporarily, and then stopped working again.

I’m not sure if logging out of iCloud and logging in again did anything. Sometimes messages works briefly and then freezes again. This is beyond frustrating.

I had the issue a few weeks ago, but after going through the things suggested I have not had it in 3 weeks or so. Last week I applied the newest iOS version, possibly a fix in there, certainly worth trying.

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.

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.

Matt, I followed your advice and it worked for me too! Thanks for the creative way to solve this critical issue.

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?

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.

Tried all these fixes and did a phone restore using my Mac with the help of Apple support. Resolved for a few days and returned snd STILL having same issue again. iMessage freezes. Settings freeze when trying to click on IMessage

Anyone resolve this yet? I’ve tried every recommendation and still can’t get texting to work. This started challenging after I logged out of my account on the phone. Logged back in (also experiencing Screentime issues). I can’t open messaging or the settings for messaging without both freezing and then crashing. Is Apple doing anything to help here??

I have the same issue. It is now happening across all my devices. It has been happening for 2 months now. Apple made me rest my phone 4 times. It solved the problem for 1-2 weeks each time but goes back to the same problem. It is also affecting FaceTime and calls. Where I can’t pick up the FaceTime call and the calls are delayed on my watch or computer. But I have no problems using any other apps on my phone. Apple keeps telling me it’s not their software or anything on their end which I find extremely frustrating as it’s only their apps that don’t work. Still to find a solution