Just days after the huge root security flaw on macOS earlier this week, a growing number of iPhone and iPad users are reporting serious reboot and respring issues. The problem, detailed in a growing Reddit thread and on Twitter, seems to stem from apps that use local notifications, such as reminder applications like Headspace and Calm…
According to affected users, the issues first began when the time turned to 12:15AM on December 2nd in their area. Once that time struck, their iPhone began “respringing” nearly instantly.
Respringing is when the iPhone essentially goes through a soft reboot. It never fully shuts down, but the Home screen is reloading itself. In other cases, however, users report that their device fully shuts down and reboots.
One Reddit user claims to have spoken with a senior Apple representative who informed him that the company is working on a fix.
Just spoke to a senior Apple rep and they too suggested manually setting the date to 1 day before the problem started – this was 1 Dec for me and it worked (I’m on an iPhone X running iOS 11.1.2 (15B202)) – or resetting all settings to default.
They did mention that they’re presently being flooded with calls reporting the same issue and that their ‘Engineering team’ is working on it figuring out what the problem is.
The issue seems to stem from applications that use the local notification system and how that relates to the iPhone’s date/time system. This includes apps such as Headspace and Calm, which send daily reminders for things such as meditation and mindfulness.
Here’s how Apple describes local notifications:
With local notifications, your app configures the notification details locally and passes those details to the system, which then handles the delivery of the notification when your app is not in the foreground.
Apple is currently recommending that affected users set their device’s date back by one day. Here’s how to do that:
- Open Settings
- Select ‘General’
- Scroll to ‘Date & Time’
- Disable ‘Set Automatically’
- Use the slider to turn the date back to December 1st
Of note, there are other issues that can stem from incorrect date and time, including alarms not working properly and authentication errors in Safari with SSL-enabled websites.
Other suggestions for fixing include disabling all notifications for the affected applications. Here’s how to do that:
- Open Settings
- Select ‘Notifications’
- Choose the app in question
- Disable ‘Allow Notifications’
We’ve reached out to Apple for a comment and will update if we hear anything. Are you affected by this issue? Let us know down in the comments. Of note, the bug doesn’t currently seem to affect users running the iOS 11.2 beta.
If Springboard is crashing every 30 seconds, people are going to struggle to even download the fix when it is available. This does not sound smooth in any way.
— Benjamin Mayo (@bzamayo) December 2, 2017
If you have an app that has local notification with repeating settings, it will crash iOS Springboard on Dec. 2 (Tomorrow!) Here is a reproducible app by @takayamahttps://t.co/ecEoxFN2hM
— Yoshimasa Niwa (@niw) December 2, 2017
https://twitter.com/jeremybank/status/936775452097626113
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