Messages App won't open. Keeps on crashing

[John07524]

Hi and happy holidays to all of you.

My wife has a iPhone 4s. She tries to check her text messages but the messaging app won't open. It keeps on closing like it crashes.

I turned it off a few times but it didn't help. I'm really not in the mood of going to an Apple Store for this issue.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

 

[RoofMonkey]

By turning it off did you use the slide to power off?
Try a hard reset instead. Press & hold sleep and home buttons until
you see the Apple logo, then release both buttons. Give that a try and see if it helps.

 

[John07524]

Thanks much for your reply. I tried it but it didn't help.

What else can we try?

 

[RoofMonkey]

I hate to jump right to the Restore option, but that may be last choice. Hopefully someone else will chime in with a few other ideas. ?

 

[Rugaby]

If a hard reset didn't work I would go with a restore. It is a new phone shouldn't be that bad.

 

[IceCold357]

This happened to me a few days ago also although a hard reset fixed it. Weird though.


Sent from my iPhone using iCafe app

 

[John07524]

Thanks all of you.

This is what happened. I iMessaged her from my phone and it worked. I opened other messages and it worked. Only by one contact the app crashed. I deleted that one and it's good as new.

Btw that contact was my mother in law. Ouch that hurts lol

 

[FeFeFionaLS]

If this happens to anyone else I have a solution that saves you resetting.

I was part of an iMessage group chat that I ended up receiving 52 unopened messages on. When I clicked on the messages app it wouldn't open and just crash. To solve this, go into your contact book, select a random contact that isn't the one who is crashing your phone, and press send message. This will take you into the messaging app with a new text message. Press the back button in the top left hand corner and you should go into where it lists all of your recent messages. Now slide across the field/contact that is crashing your phone( don't press) , and it should appear with a red button that says delete, so press delete.

You won't get to read the 52 messages... But your messages app won't crash anymore hopefully because the source is gone

 

[clo12]

Thank you, @FeFeFionaLS, you are my saviour! I just had this problem because , uh, well, my sister sent me one message that included 61440 emojicon bees.. my messages app had a complete meltdown.

I didn't actually have to delete the whole conversation in the end, as soon as I made it into the actual messaging app, aforementioned bee-message loaded fine and I was able to delete it.

Anyway, thank you again!

 

[Samantha Jeffrey]

If this happens to anyone else I have a solution that saves you resetting.

I was part of an iMessage group chat that I ended up receiving 52 unopened messages on. When I clicked on the messages app it wouldn't open and just crash. To solve this, go into your contact book, select a random contact that isn't the one who is crashing your phone, and press send message. This will take you into the messaging app with a new text message. Press the back button in the top left hand corner and you should go into where it lists all of your recent messages. Now slide across the field/contact that is crashing your phone( don't press) , and it should appear with a red button that says delete, so press delete.

You won't get to read the 52 messages... But your messages app won't crash anymore hopefully because the source is gone

Thanks so much! I didn't have a clue what to do and didn't fancy resetting my iPhone. It turns out my friend sent me 100+ smiley faces (why she sent them, I don't know!?!)
Once again, thanks very much for your help - you're a life saver!

 

[energybell]

If you have iOS 5 then double click home button and then find the messages app in the app switching are that appears when you double click the home button and then press and hold until the icon starts to jiggle and then tap the red little circle in the top left corner and it should disappear and then try opening menssages again.

 

[Jimi]

Omg thank you ssooooo much I was about to reset my whole phone. UHG my gf froze my phone but when I sent a text with another phone it let me acess my messages to delete all the messages. THANKS!

 

[AdamDaieh]

I'll remember this, might be helpful when I encounter this issue in the future.

 

[Mette Thomsen]

If this happens to anyone else I have a solution that saves you resetting.

I was part of an iMessage group chat that I ended up receiving 52 unopened messages on. When I clicked on the messages app it wouldn't open and just crash. To solve this, go into your contact book, select a random contact that isn't the one who is crashing your phone, and press send message. This will take you into the messaging app with a new text message. Press the back button in the top left hand corner and you should go into where it lists all of your recent messages. Now slide across the field/contact that is crashing your phone( don't press) , and it should appear with a red button that says delete, so press delete.

You won't get to read the 52 messages... But your messages app won't crash anymore hopefully because the source is gone

Thank you so much - this saved me! And how nice of you to share your solutions with the rest of us ;-)

 

[Sandra Eckert-Stewart]

My contact app also crashes when I tried one of the above solutions...now what?

 

[Europa]

my contact app also crashes when I tried one of the above solutions...now what?

Have you tried a hard reset or reboot before opening the Contacts app?

 

[HandBanana]

If this happens to anyone else I have a solution that saves you resetting.

I was part of an iMessage group chat that I ended up receiving 52 unopened messages on. When I clicked on the messages app it wouldn't open and just crash. To solve this, go into your contact book, select a random contact that isn't the one who is crashing your phone, and press send message. This will take you into the messaging app with a new text message. Press the back button in the top left hand corner and you should go into where it lists all of your recent messages. Now slide across the field/contact that is crashing your phone( don't press) , and it should appear with a red button that says delete, so press delete.

You won't get to read the 52 messages... But your messages app won't crash anymore hopefully because the source is gone

My dear sweet baby jesus you just saved me LOADS of time on a freaking factory restart. THANK YOU SO MUCH! That'll be the last time my freaking cousin tries to send me a gif over text ever again...

 

[Veronica]

I made an account to thank the wonderful person that suggested opening contacts to go to messages and to delete the messages that were making messages crash, saved me from having to restart my phone.

 

[chris]

This issue seems to be happening in iOS 8. It's due to a text string that can cause the Messages app to crash and reboot your iPhone. When you attempt to open Messages, it will repeatedly crash. Apple's working on a software update, but there are a few fixes.

• The temporary fix requires you send a message to yourself using Siri. Something along the lines of, “Siri, send a message to myself.” You’ll be prompted to confirm your phone number and dictate a message. The content doesn’t matter.
• If you know the person who sent the text, you can have a laugh (or not) and ask them to send another message. That should get you back into messages, where you can delete the discussion.
• Finally, a third fix is to use the share sheet to send a webpage, photo or anything else via Messages.

Any of these should work. More on this story is available on our blog.

If these fixes work for you, I'd greatly appreciate it if you signed up and commented in this thread.

 

[Europa]

This issue seems to be happening in iOS 8. It's due to a text string that can cause the Messages app to crash and reboot your iPhone. When you attempt to open Messages, it will repeatedly crash. Apple's working on a software update, but there are a few fixes.

• The temporary fix requires you send a message to yourself using Siri. Something along the lines of, “Siri, send a message to myself.” You’ll be prompted to confirm your phone number and dictate a message. The content doesn’t matter.
• If you know the person who sent the text, you can have a laugh (or not) and ask them to send another message. That should get you back into messages, where you can delete the discussion.
• Finally, a third fix is to use the share sheet to send a webpage, photo or anything else via Messages.

Any of these should work. More on this story is available on our blog.

If these fixes work for you, I'd greatly appreciate it if you signed up and commented in this thread.

Another fix is to reply to the text from your Mac, if you have one. I'm also pretty sure the solution in post #8 of this thread will fix it. Additionally, there is a jailbreak patch to prevent it called Unicode Suppressor. Add source http://cydia.myrepospace.com/tony999 in Cydia first.