We can all agree that iPhone apps can be incredibly useful, practical and even magical when they work properly, but there’s nothing more annoying than an app which keeps on crashing for no apparent reason. It’s all the more annoying when an iPhone keeps crashing before an app even loads.
I recently installed the app for Chicago Public Radio’s “This American Life,” which wonderfully contains almost all of the show’s episodes for the last couple of years. Unfortunately, it’s also plagued with serious bugs. After I installed it, it crashed constantly, usually before the interface would even load. Later, it started crashing when asked to play shows, which sort of eliminates the purpose of the app in the first place.
If you’re having problems with an iPhone app that crashes before it loads properly, here are a few tips to try.
Close competing apps. If an app suddenly starts crashing before it loads, there’s a good chance that it’s not able to access certain parts of your iPhone that are already in use. You might have two apps installed that stream music, for instance, and a bit of shoddy app design can mean that only one of the two apps can remain open at one time.
You can close apps by going to your home screen and double-clicking the Home button (the button with the grey square on the front of your iPhone). A list of open iPhone apps will be displayed. Hold your finger on the bottom of the screen for a second.
You can now hit the little red minus sign beside any apps that you want to close. Try closing all apps that could be using the same system resources as the app you want to run. This is a quick fix, but it usually works.
Restart your iPhone. Bigger iPhone apps require a restart, because they need to access certain files in the iPhone’s operating system before they can work properly. It’s a good idea to restart your iPhone once a day to avoid crashes.
To restart an iPhone, hold the top button down until the red slider bar appears. Be patient as it powers off and then hit the top button again to turn it back on. This tip works best with bigger apps, but any app can benefit from a good restart.
Make sure you’ve got room. All iPhone apps need a little room to run. It’s just how computers work–they’re constantly writing and rewriting information, so if there’s no space on your phone, the apps will be unable to work properly.
Keep at least a gigabyte of free space on your iPhone at all times, especially if you install a lot of apps. This should keep the majority of iPhone apps from crashing while they load and it will lead to better performance for all of your phone’s functions.
Delete and reinstall the app. Sometimes, part of an app gets corrupted for various reasons too boring to get into right here. It’s not a big deal if it isn’t happening all the time, though. It simply means that you have to delete and reinstall a certain app.
If you’ve already tried everything else, try deleting and reinstalling. To do this, press on your iPhone’s screen until all of the apps start to wiggle and display little red Xs in their corners. Tap the red X of the app that keeps crashing. This will delete it, but you can download it again from the app store without paying twice.
This is sort of a last resort, but it’s what I had to do to get the aforementioned “This American Life” iPhone app to work properly. By reinstalling the app, you’re giving it a fresh start, and it should work as expected.
Have any other tips for fixing a crashing iPhone app? Post below.
