File-based apps broken in iPadOS 17.4.1

[Boneslasher]

I have been having this kind of issue since Friday (5.April) evening (iPad Pro 2018, 12.9-inch, iPadOS 17.4.1).

It all started with the Files app not responding (not showing deleted/updated/downloaded... files), then it propagated to other apps. Every app using iCloud Drive as its base is opening with a blank browser screen (the left-side bar is usually there, but unclickable).

Now Files, PDF Viewer, Numbers, GoodNotes, ..., everything I tried that works with Files opens to a blank screen, nothing else. After a while the app in question crashes. I tried to launch Mail, Safari, Acrobat, ... they all work well and as expected.

I tried to Uninstall the Files app, and then reinstall it. No change.

Force restart or ordinary shut-down, turn-on procedures make the system work for maybe a minute, but not always. Then everything is blocked again. I believe something happened with the outage Apple servers received last week, but my Mac and iPhone are working more than fine.

I believe I will try the following steps, unless someone else has better ideas:

1. deactivate iCloud Drive on iPad. Restart the iPad. See if the apps resume working. If not...

2. log out from Apple ID. Restart the iPad. See if things get back to normality. If not...

3. I'm downloading the Restore image and will try to reinstall iPadOS without Restoring the device. If it doesn't work...

4. Restore the iPad completely. If it doesn't work... I will contact Apple Support.

 

[Slartibart]

assuming you have not some important uniquely stored in Apple‘s Files - delete Files and restore it from the Appstore.

 

[Boneslasher]

assuming you have not some important uniquely stored in Apple‘s Files - delete Files and restore it from the Appstore.

I believe all Local-only files are stored in the Files app, aren't they?
I can make a local backup of those, of course, and try that.
One hour ago, I have contacted Apple Support, and engineers should be looking at why my iCloud Drive appears to be stuck. From an early diagnosis by Level 2 Phone Support, it looks like I have thousands of empty files in iCloud Drive, which of course I cannot see but that they can see.
My very personal instinct is that this is caused by Adobe apps. Whenever I open (on Mac) an Adobe file that is originally located in iCloud Drive, it creates a temporary backup file that is crucial for data recovery if there ever is a crash. I suppose iCloud Drive doesn't like those.
On the iPad, this all started when I exported a PDF of about 20 pages to SVG files from the Illustrator app for iPad and saved them in the Downloads folder in iCloud Drive. Ever since, the iPad has been unusable for anything related to files stored in iCloud Drive.

How those among you who use Adobe CC manage their files? Where do you save them? Locally and then make backups to Cloud Storage? InDesign cannot save directly to Adobe Cloud, for example.

 

[pixelrogue]

Same issues ever since iOS 17.4 (which persisted through 17.4.1.)
Selecting even a single photo from camera roll to share via Files (or other apps) causes Photos to freeze, requiring a force quit. Reliably freezes after restarts, updates etc.

Other bugs since updating to 17.4 include:
• Delays to login, where there is a black screen that takes longer to wake up to access the phone
• Screen freezes, where nothing will function except taking screenshots. Can't quit, go to springboard etc.
(can put phone to sleep, see notifications on lock screen, but once you are back in seeing same freeze.) -
a full phone reboot. 17.4 made using the iPhone a PIA. Essentially the screen is locked up...so buttons work but
can't reboot. Thankfully Siri was on and I could initiate reboot that way.

 

[Boneslasher]

Same issues ever since iOS 17.4 (which persisted through 17.4.1.)
Selecting even a single photo from camera roll to share via Files (or other apps) causes Photos to freeze, requiring a force quit. Reliably freezes after restarts, updates etc.

Other bugs since updating to 17.4 include:
• Delays to login, where there is a black screen that takes longer to wake up to access the phone
• Screen freezes, where nothing will function except taking screenshots. Can't quit, go to springboard etc.
(can put phone to sleep, see notifications on lock screen, but once you are back in seeing same freeze.) -
a full phone reboot. 17.4 made using the iPhone a PIA. Essentially the screen is locked up...so buttons work but
can't reboot. Thankfully Siri was on and I could initiate reboot that way.

If it makes you feel better, the problem is solved after fully restoring the iPad.
According to Apple Support engineers, my iCloud Drive was clogged with small temporary files (cookies, orphaned plists, etc...), which caused the iPad to "think" indefinitely until it timed out and crashed. They couldn't explain why my Mac and iPhone do not show the issue, but restoring appears to be the only way out of this.
Or... try to log-out of Apple ID. The iPad will work perfectly fine! But if you need iCloud Drive as I did, you will eventually have to log back in, and ... the problem will arise again after few minutes from logging in.
I still think that Illustrator did something bad, but it could've been also a corrupted installation of iPadOS over the last updates because several issues I had reported as bugs in the last 6 months solved themselves with a restore. I thought the pain of my Windows days was behind me, though...

 

[sizzzzlerz]

Updated to 17.4.1 a 2nd time today. It broke most of my non-apple apps. I tried a suggestion to log out of icloud and then restart. Seemingly, it worked! I can now launch all the apps the were crashing. Forced restarting without the icloud thing did not work. total mystery as to why this failure happened. Hopefully, the fix will stick

 

[CokeRing]

I am experiencing this as well with iOS and ipadOS. I never had issue up until this point, of course now while on holidays. External drive, and internal drive issues Previously transferred without issue. Now both filesystems on the local huge delays, incomplete transfers locally as well as apps needing access to files will not open or freeze when accessing share options/ files system. Only a hard reset will relieve the issue until access to the file system is needed again by an app or myself accessing it. I noticed in the system settings under the storage usage, deleted files are listed as still remaining although they have been deleted (ie big files, video files from Blackmagics video app for example)

Using 17.4.1 as well

 

[sizzzzlerz]

I discovered that, in my case, the problem stemmed to icloud being hosed, somehow. I signed out of it, restarted, and things were working. I signed back in and they continued to work and have since. Why do I need that again?

 

[Minato1990]

For **** sakes this issue is ridiculous
APPLE NEEDS TO FIX THIS ASAP

 

[CokeRing]

I discovered that, in my case, the problem stemmed to icloud being hosed, somehow. I signed out of it, restarted, and things were working. I signed back in and they continued to work and have since. Why do I need that again?

Yeah I don’t see the correlation to iCloud in my situation. The devices feels like they have resolved themselves throughout the day, with a few resets in between. But i have not incited them with large file transfers off/on the devices by way of usb hdd nor deleted files. This update has produced some hitches/bugs that have been more noticeable than previous releases. More noticeable instability with programs.

 

[NazgulRR]

I am experiencing this as well with iOS and ipadOS. I never had issue up until this point, of course now while on holidays. External drive, and internal drive issues Previously transferred without issue. Now both filesystems on the local huge delays, incomplete transfers locally as well as apps needing access to files will not open or freeze when accessing share options/ files system. Only a hard reset will relieve the issue until access to the file system is needed again by an app or myself accessing it. I noticed in the system settings under the storage usage, deleted files are listed as still remaining although they have been deleted (ie big files, video files from Blackmagics video app for example)

Using 17.4.1 as well

Yup. Exactly the same here, including discovering the issue whilst on holidays not allowing me to make backups of my SD cards. Not impressed.

 

[jomo25]

If it makes you feel better, the problem is solved after fully restoring the iPad.
According to Apple Support engineers, my iCloud Drive was clogged with small temporary files (cookies, orphaned plists, etc...), which caused the iPad to "think" indefinitely until it timed out and crashed. They couldn't explain why my Mac and iPhone do not show the issue, but restoring appears to be the only way out of this.
Or... try to log-out of Apple ID. The iPad will work perfectly fine! But if you need iCloud Drive as I did, you will eventually have to log back in, and ... the problem will arise again after few minutes from logging in.
I still think that Illustrator did something bad, but it could've been also a corrupted installation of iPadOS over the last updates because several issues I had reported as bugs in the last 6 months solved themselves with a restore. I thought the pain of my Windows days was behind me, though...

Thanks for the info. Did it require a full restore from a Mac or can I do it from an iCloud backup?

 

[BBDDVV]

... and the non-responsive Files app is responsive and snappy again for me (and related apps like HP Smart that didn't want to store scanned files anymore). Didn't change anything, suddenly (well, after trying it again) it now works fine... 🤷‍♂️
Fingers crossed it magically appears for everyone else as well! 🤞

 

[jomo25]

Nope, not for me.

 

[Propine]

Same story here, iCloud Drive related for sure, turning it off and on again doesn’t help. Waiting for a fix. First time my ipad air 5 lets me down so badly I have to switch to a Mac to finish my task

 

[squircle782]

Chiming in here - it happens to me regularly since 17.4.1 on iPad os and iOS my temp workaround is to restart the device and it begins to work for a period of time until it doesn’t again. I hate nuclear options like signing out of iCloud and signing back in I’ve no time for that faff so I’ll have to wait for a proper fix.

 

[jomo25]

So, the only way I fixed it was to basically reset via the Mac.

So, I backed up to iCloud. Reset to new device on the Mac (interestingly it did a software update, even though I had 17.4.1 on both iPads already). Then after reset, restored via iCloud backup. It’s been 5 days now and it hasnt recurred on either my iPad mini or Pro, knock on wood.

Unfortunately, it did take essentially a nuclear option to fix. But it wasnt too bad - about 2 hours of backup/reset/restore per device And I was back up and running without any issues. (The only residual was some sluggishness accessing iCloud files since they all had to download when I accessed them the first time, but as I use the files, that has dissipated.)

 

[Alameda]

Updated to 17.4.1 a 2nd time today. It broke most of my non-apple apps. I tried a suggestion to log out of icloud and then restart. Seemingly, it worked! I can now launch all the apps the were crashing. Forced restarting without the icloud thing did not work. total mystery as to why this failure happened. Hopefully, the fix will stick

Does this mean your iPad no longer syncs your Messages, Calendar, and Notes?
I’m also having this problem.

 

[brandjas]

I've been having this issue as well. I have to reboot my iPhone (12 mini 64GB) about once a day. When the issue occurs, iCloud Photos sharing doesn't work, photos sync stalls, the files app is completely frozen and basically anything that requires filesystem interaction seems to be broken.

But today it also caused data loss. iCloud photos sync was frozen again, so after letting it sit for about an hour I decided to (gracefully) reboot. The photos I made today and yesterday were no longer present in the photos app. It showed "Restoring from iCloud". After a while, yesterday's photos appeared but the photos I made today are lost (including those that I've successfully shared via WhatsApp and Telegram, in both cases from within these apps since sharing from the Photos app didn't work). My brother is having similar issues (no data loss though) so it seems quite widespread.

There are some actions that consistently trigger the issue. There is a specific PDF file on the website of the Dutch tax authority that causes these issues when attempting to download it (I first encountered this issue on the 24th of March). For context: I use iCloud Photos but not iCloud Drive (I use Mobius sync/syncthing instead).

 

[jerrythea]

The reddit forum on this indicates that the beta update to 17.5 (I am going to beta4) seems to resolve the issue.
It would be nice if Apple actually admitted to the fault and broadcast some sort of help for the 1000s of users impacted.

We cannot be the only iPhone users that use Files......

 

[Alameda]

So, the only way I fixed it was to basically reset via the Mac.

So, I backed up to iCloud. Reset to new device on the Mac (interestingly it did a software update, even though I had 17.4.1 on both iPads already). Then after reset, restored via iCloud backup. It’s been 5 days now and it hasnt recurred on either my iPad mini or Pro, knock on wood.

Unfortunately, it did take essentially a nuclear option to fix. But it wasnt too bad - about 2 hours of backup/reset/restore per device And I was back up and running without any issues. (The only residual was some sluggishness accessing iCloud files since they all had to download when I accessed them the first time, but as I use the files, that has dissipated.)

I did a full reset and restore as well. So far, it is working. My settings are as follows:
iCloud Drive: OFF
iCloud Photo Backup: ON
iPad Backup…. Files: OFF

It’s very odd to me that there is ‘iCloud Drive” and also “iPad Backup”, which copy the same files to the cloud.

 

[The Clark]

Same here, first time with an iPad Pro too, I thought I was going crazy.

 

[NazgulRR]

Seems fixed with 17.5 now.

The same SD card / adapter combo with the same gopro video files that I had issues with on 17.4.1 copied just fine now. 116 video, 141GB in size copied in one go with no hiccups in c20-30min from SD card to iPad storage. This is 2018 Ipad Pro.

Really wish this worked back when I was on a trip and risked losing half of the vids because Files app just couldn't copy...