iPhone, while working this morning, has developed the annoying habit of not launching non-Apple Apps.
I tap on the App, the animated window opening fills the screen, but is empty and after a fraction of a second the empty window animates itself down thru the bottom of the screen.
Opening the App Switcher (swipe up from bottom) shows the App open but tapping on it, it disappears down the bottom.
I don’t know what this is called, and my various keywords attempts have only led to mostly clickbaity dodgy sounding links.
Does anyone know what this is called? is it “third party ios apps crash on launch” or how what?
I’ve launched about four Apple apps and they look normal.
Restarted the phone couple of times, put on wifi, turned it off, vpn on and off, so far nothing has helped. I”m flummoxed to know what could have changed since this morning. Just been carrying it around in my phone pocket all day. Doesn’t seem related to apps that use internet access, just that they are third party and all used to work fine…
I had a moment of hope that it repaired itself, in that the App Switcher view showed content in some 3rd party apps I had tapped, but tapping to bring them to the front made them disappear back into their icons.
Seems odd, that all of a sudden 3rd party Apps would get wonky, like a certificate expired and no one renewed it, that sort of thing, but I have no clue how that stuff works.
Haven’t found a solution yet, I don’t even know what this is called, if it is a crash or has some other technical name.
Lots of search results for apps crashing in relation to OS updates (not done in long time), lack of free storage on device (83 of 128GB available), battery problem (charged to 100% last night), network problems (some of the apps don’t need internet access, and Apple apps are working over data and wifi).
I continued searching with various keywords and what I consider semi-reputable sites had recommended shutting iPhone down with hardware buttons instead of the power icon in Control Centre. Didn’t help. Airplane Mode on/off, didn’t help. Letting Time sync again, didn’t help.
There are at least three Apple Discussions posts, with very few responses and dating back to 2012 with titles similar to this thread.
Common thread was that some connection to iTunes (now App Store) might have gotten out of sync.
In App Store I signed out, immediately back in (was not asked for username or password) and ping ping came the messages in a third party App. Other apps launching as normal now.
Which makes me wonder… some of these have no usage of internet within the app yet would not launch if the App Store connection was not right. Yet on other iDevices I can use sometimes quite old apps while in Airplane Mode, in which they, presumably, cannot check in with App Store Mother Ship.
Now I feel dirty when touching the iPhone, as if every App is checking with Cupertino to prove I didn’t steal the App, and my launching of Apps is being watched from Space Ship Central. Icky.
Also an interesting point @jk2gs , on the Mac one can tell more or less each software to check for updates or not. In iOS only the main device’s updates can be limited. Hm.
If these checks are going on, they’re behind the scenes. I have sometimes poked into the mobile data usage pages and found Apple burning up hundreds of MB behind the scenes for vaguely referenced items. Although I have iOS updates turned off, and I wouldn’t knowingly burn up some of my couple of GB mobile data plan for an update, updates are still shown in the submenus of Mobile Data usage. I’m not aware of any way to turn the long list of items off.
UPDATE 25 Oct: occurred again today. As soon as I launched App Store App and logged in, third party apps worked again. Maybe it’s an Apple technique to discover IP address or something, as my VPN would not launch until I signed in over wifi.