iOS 17 Problems and Bugs Tracker: Stay Updated on Issues
iOS 17 was announced at WWDC 2023, and it brings some minor new additions that add up to a better user experience. Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s an aggregation of micro-refinements that polishes the overall software. Since few new features exist, iOS 17 is probably focusing on stability.
What’s New in iOS 17?
The headline feature is customizable call screens. It adds a depth of personalization to your calls. You can customize what people see when you call. Live Voicemail is another new feature, where you can see a Live Transcript of a message.
The Messages app gets many new features too. It integrates all the iMessage apps into one convenient place. Check-In notifies people when you arrive at a destination and is quite helpful. Swipe to reply is something we’ve seen on other messaging apps, and it’s finally on iMessage.
Audio message transcription comes in handy; you can read a voice message without listening to it. There are some new features with Stickers too. You can record an audio or video message when someone misses your FaceTime call. So far, iOS 17 has been all about improving the two critical aspects of a phone: Calling and Messaging. That’s not all; we also got the StandBy feature.
The StandBy feature shows you glanceable information in landscape mode, letting you turn your phone into a bedside clock. You can use it as a slideshow too. Full-screen Live Activities makes tracking your orders or the live sports scores even easier.
With a swipe, interactive widgets allow you to play music, strike off reminders, turn off the lights, and more. You can swap numbers with others using SwapDrop. AirDrop is better, too, since transfers can finish via the web if you step away.
The keyboard and typing experience are much better, thanks to predictive text and better autocorrect. Finally, there are some new Safari features, like multiple web profiles. Spotlight search is more intelligent. And we’ll get a journalling app later this year.
How to Report an iOS 17 Bug?
While all those features might make you want to update your phone to iOS 17 immediately, you must remember that beta software isn’t meant for daily use. It’s prone to several bugs and inconsistencies. App crashes may occur, and the UI responsiveness is much worse.
The point of developer betas is identifying bugs and software inconsistencies. All the beta testers report these bugs to Apple, and they eventually get patched before a public launch. iOS 17 will approach platform stability around September 2023. It will receive several developer and public betas until then.
Developer feedback is critical for delivering a more refined experience during a public launch. The Feedback Assistant app is the best way to report a bug to Apple. If you updated to the beta, you should see the app pop up on your home screen, or you’ll find it in your app library.
To report an iOS 17 bug, write your feedback in the Feedback Assistant app. You’ll have to file one issue per report, and you shouldn’t combine multiple bugs into one report.
Type a clear title that describes the bug you’re facing on iOS 17. It should be a concise summary. Then, the next step is defining the bug. You have to mention the actual results you got and the expected results you were supposed to get.
Finally, you can attach any proof of the bug if you have managed to take a screenshot. This is how you can report iOS 17 bugs.
List of iOS 17 Developer Beta 2 Bugs
Bug 1: There’s a new design for the call screen UI again, with some changes to the text and spacing. However, it still looks weirdly spaced out and has an inconsistent design aesthetic overall. We hope they change this in the final build since it still looks rather premature. Apple is probably experimenting with the looks of this page since there were visual inconsistencies with the first beta too.
Bug 2: Permission to copy. iOS has a security feature where it asks user permission to copy text or images from one app to another. This doesn’t just apply to third-party apps; it also applies to Apple’s own apps. You can try copying a text from your Notes app into Messages, and it’ll still ask permission! However, it’s supposed to ask you only once.
After you grant permission to copy, it shouldn’t show up again if it’s the same app pair. IOS 17 Beta 2 endlessly asks you permission to copy and paste text or images across multiple third and first-party apps. Granting permission every time can get rather annoying.
Bug 3: There are bug reports with many popular third-party apps. For instance, a messaging app, WhatsApp. The report mentions that the app closes down as soon you try to edit a message. With Twitter, it keeps unpinning direct messages, shows incorrect read receipts, keeps refreshing the DMs page, and also randomly crashes. There are similar bugs on other third-party apps, which surely need more optimization.
Bug 4: Some reports say that the Apple Music app randomly keeps crashing on the Beta. In our use, it also takes too long to load up search results or play a song. It used to crash after enabling crossfade, but the second beta has addressed this.
Bug 5: The messages app randomly becomes unresponsive and freezes up entirely. This happens at random times, even when you’re not typing something. Closing the app and opening it again works, and a reboot fixes this too.
Bug 6: NameDrop glitches. NameDrop is a new feature with iOS 17 where you can share your contact with someone with just a tap. There are some glitches with this feature, and it sometimes refuses to work properly.
Bug 7: Issues with auto-filling passwords. Reports say that the phone doesn’t fill in either the username or password properly and ends up leaving it blank. This causes problems with auto sign-in.
Bug 8: Problems with installation. There are some reports of phones entering a boot loop, crashing entirely, or just refusing to install the update. Even Apple Configurator restore doesn’t seem to help, and your only option is to visit a service center. This sort of severe bug is rather rare.
Some Bugs Resolved, Others Persist
Bug 25 (See the Dev Beta 1 bugs list) persists with iOS 17 Beta 2 and has not been addressed. Except for Bug 26 and Bug 3, all of the other reported bugs are still present. The overall smoothness and responsiveness of the phone are much better now.
There are substantial improvements to the performance of AirDrop in our experience. It now works reliably to send multiple files, and the clipboard sharing also functions as it should. Bug 26 has been addressed with the update.
List of All iOS 17 Developer Beta 1 Bugs
We have faced these problems on our iPhone 13 unit.
Bug 1: The signal strength indicator keeps randomly disappearing. This doesn’t affect the actual signal of the phone, but the bars that indicate the signal disappears and it’s replaced by a blank space that shows a bit of the wallpaper. This is repeatable and occurs often.
Bug 2: The phone says it could not activate the mobile data network. This is weird since the signal bars clearly show some signal, and the phone worked perfectly. Pressing on “ok” gets rid of the popup.
Bug 3: The overall responsiveness of the UI is just not there. Swiping between home pages, opening apps, unlocking the phone, scrolling through your feed, browsing, and all basic tasks have heavy frame drops in the UI. The phone doesn’t run at a consistent 60 FPS; you’ll notice it’s very janky, with several jitters throughout the UI. The stutter is even worse with Low Power Mode.
Bug 4: The battery life has taken a significant hit on our unit. While the earlier screen-on-time with similar use was around 7 hours, it only gets about 5 hours on iOS 17. The standby battery drain is also much worse.
Bug 5: Screen time got many new features with iOS 17 for digital well-being. However, screen time isn’t working correctly on many units. It shows zero minutes on our unit, and screen time offers no data. The screen distance and communication limit features are buggy too.
Bug 6: The recent calls page in the phone app has a poorly designed look, with poor spacing and bizarre fonts. The names have entirely moved to the left, which is inconsistent with the design. This is hopefully an early UI design bug.
Bug 7: The keyboard is a buggy mess on iOS 17. It often refuses to minimize when you want to leave a conversation on any app. You have to end up closing the app and opening it. Sometimes, the keyboard gets frozen without showing you what you typed, making it very inconvenient.
Bug 8: Wallpaper disappearing. Instead of showing the wallpaper you set, it’s replaced with a blank wallpaper. It happens on both the home and lock screens. It just fills the entire background black instead of showing you the wallpaper. A restart does not fix it; you must delete the entire wallpaper combo and set it up again. It still shows you the widgets and notifications, so the functionality remains. In some cases, the font and colour combo you chose remains intact too.
Bug 9: Image downloading bug. This happens on multiple apps; we’ve shown an example on WhatsApp. The phone had perfect signal strength but refused to download the image. It asks you to try again and shows a failure message. This happened multiple times on apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. Usually, fixing this is simple. You just have to toggle AirPlane mode or restart the device.
Bug 10: Digital Wellbeing only shows your screen time for today. Earlier, this section displayed statistics for all your previous days. You could use the arrow keys to navigate and check your past statistics. You could gain insights into all your previous stats from the Screen Time section in the Settings app. However, it now just shows your app and web usage for the day and doesn’t go back to any previous stats. It still compiles the data into a weekly summary, which clubs your entire week’s use, and also shows the daily average. But it doesn’t show past statistics.
Bug 11: RAM management issues. If you open a few social media apps and then open a browser, there’s a good chance that some of the apps will have to restart. iOS is already restrictive with background tasks, and apps now don’t even stay open properly. If you spend a few minutes on Safari and then switch to other apps, the web pages will mostly refresh if you reopen Safari. This problem is even worse with heavier games.
Bug 12: Many users on Twitter report missing Memojis from the Emoji Keyboard. We also have the same problem with our unit. A restart sometimes fixes this issue, but Memojis have randomly disappeared from the left pane of the iOS keyboard.
Bug 13: There are many issues with Face ID on iOS 17. This issue is worse on the 13 and 14 series since they also support landscape mode Face ID. Sometimes the Face ID is too slow to scan your face, and sometimes just doesn’t work. People have reported Siri slowing down too, though we haven’t faced this problem.
Bug 14: The keyboard often refuses to appear in several apps. You need to completely clear the app from memory to get it to work. This bug is persistent and often reappears within seconds. If you swipe to enter Spotlight search, the keyboard gets stuck on the home page and doesn’t work at all.
Bug 15: The front camera completely stopped working in this case of iOS 17. This is a major bug, and reboot does not help. The camera refuses to activate no matter what, and reverting to iOS 16.5 might be your only option.
Bug 16: There are some reports on Twitter about notifications not coming through on iOS 17. This is specifically for Twitter and the Mail app. We’ve noticed this on apps like WhatsApp too. The only solution is to open those apps and wait a few minutes before notifications appear. There are also some cases of notification delays.
Bug 17: Play and pause buttons aren’t working system-wide. We use these buttons when watching YouTube or listening to music and control them through widgets. None of these work properly.
Bug 18: All phones have some shutter lag. It’s the time the phone takes to calculate the necessary parameters before capturing a photo. However, if it takes too long, it may miss the scene and capture something else instead if your subject is out of the frame. This is a problem with moving subjects. The phone also takes some out-of-focus and blurry photos, directly linking this issue to a slow shutter speed as well.
Bug 19: Opening the camera app while multitasking causes every single other in RAM to restart.
Bug 20: Mail fails to access to IMAP server. If it has a self-assigned SSL certificate, it shows an error, “Unable to create a secure connection to the server (“bad certificate format” -9,808)”. This doesn’t happen on the stable version, and it also shows up if you set up a new mail account with the same server, credentials, and IMAP configurations.
Bug 21: Messages. Some messages get stuck on sending, despite actually getting delivered. In some cases, it gets stuck and doesn’t send at all. The problem happens with iMessage too. You keep getting notifications saying that the message delivery wasn’t unsuccessful, but the message sometimes goes through.
Bug 22: Random region change. For some units, the region randomly gets changed to Global, and you must reset it to your country.
Bug 23: Storage. iOS is supposed to take around 25 or 30GB of your internal storage at most, but this randomly occupies around 100 GB. The reading is not accurate.
Bug 24: Instead of displaying the clock widget, it just shows a blank white widget without the clock. It can be fixed if you remove the widget and add it again or restart the phone.
Bug 25: Server error when connecting to Wi-Fi. This is a common error, even on stable builds. The latest iOS Betas also have the same problem. Your iPhone’s SSL certificate tries to match the server settings on your iPhone. The domain name matching with SSL is an indicator of a reliable certificate. If it doesn’t match, your phone won’t connect to Wi-Fi. However, it sometimes shows this error even when everything works fine. You can try forgetting the network or resetting network settings to see if that helps.
Bug 26: AirDrop and shared clipboard are two very important Apple Ecosystem features. AirDrop needs restarts for both devices or several attempts to send files through. The clipboard mechanism gets stuck on copying many times, and other times it refuses to copy at all.
Bug 27: A lot of reports say that users aren’t able to receive phone calls and, in some cases, aren’t able to accept phone calls.
Conclusion
These were some bugs with the latest iOS 17 software. We’ve reported all of them to Apple via the Feedback app, and we encourage you to do the same if you also have these problems on the beta build.
If enough people report similar issues, they are more likely to get patched in future builds of iOS 17. Apple takes developer reports very seriously during the testing phase. If you plan to use iOS 17 on your primary phone, we don’t recommend that since some bugs can break your experience.
If you also encounter any bugs on your iPhone, you can share them with us through the Comment section or by tagging us on Twitter (@dealntech). You can also check out our iOS 16.5 bug tracker from here.
