Phone freezes up every time I open Messages

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 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.

What was Matt's suggestion? I don't see it in the thread.

This worked for me!!! Thanks so much for the suggestion - no issues since!

Updated to 17.6 but the problem persists….

really annoying

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.

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.

my iPhone 12 keep frozen when I try to edit message that I send. Please 🙏🏻 fix

Is there a solution to this problem?

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.