Why does your iPhone keep restarting?
Being a technology journalist, and a veteran one at that as my profile image sadly reveals, I am quite used to computing devices that simply reset themselves for no apparent reason. Windows laptops at least give you a blue screen of death with some error message gobbledegook to look at, my old MacBook Pro would run out of memory and the will to live and just reboot and I accepted that as the price I paid for not paying the price of an Apple RAM upgrade. When it comes to smartphones, however, my Androids have never been so rude as to wave goodbye in the middle of something, but my iPhone 13 certainly did. Unlucky for me, I guess, and I never got to the bottom of it before I did my yearly upgrade. My inboxes across messaging platforms appear to suggest that random restart and reboot loop issues are far from uncommon when it comes to an iPhone of any iteration. So, let’s look at the reasons and how you might be able to fix it without switching to Android.
The Causes Of A Seemingly Random iPhone Restart Or Reboot
Although the National Security Agency advises iPhone users, along with those of other devices, to restart their smartphones on a weekly basis for security reasons, unless they are doing so telepathically, that won’t be the reason here. No, the resets I’m talking about are the ones I have experienced, along with many others if you take a look at any Apple or iPhone support forum out there. You are minding your own business, watching a video, sending an email, catching up with social media and, bang—there’s the black screen, there’s the white Apple logo and there’s the wait for everything to reset and come back. Or, even worse, the iPhone decides it needs to reboot but then gets stuck in a reboot loop with the Apple logo just flashing at you, teasingly.
So, what is going on? I asked Apple which acknowledged my question but has yet to send me any answers. If that changes, I will update this article in due course. In the meantime, let’s explore some of the things that could be causing the mystery restart issues.
The iPhone Inactivity Reboot Issue
One of the reasons your iPhone is displaying unexpected reboot issues could be the appropriately titled inactivity reboot issue, so well covered by Kate O’Flaherty recently. This new security feature, yes it’s a security and privacy thing, was added in iOS 18.1 to protect data in case of theft or loss. Or confiscation by law enforcement, as some pointed out. Read Kate’s article for the full explanation.
Software Corruption Or iOS Update Causes iPhone To Reboot Or Restart
If you recently installed or updated an iPhone app and the restart issue began after this, then software corruption or some incompatibility, a bug in other words, could be behind the problem. Try uninstalling the app and rebooting, sorry to make you do it again, and see if the issue is resolved. Although rare, some users have complained in the past that updating to a new version of iOS has caused problems with their iPhone freezing and restarting or rebooting. These issues are usually fixed very quickly with a minor update, or by rolling back the update to a previous version that was running OK. A factory reset has been used successfully in extreme cases.
Hacker Or Other Compromise Could Make Your iPhone Unstable
I would argue that’s it’s pretty unlikely that your iPhone has been hacked or compromised in some way, but it cannot be ruled out altogether. Some spyware has been known to cause system instability, for example. If you think it is possible in your case, for example you have installed an application from an unofficial store or by following links to dubious sites, then it could be worth checking. The people at iVerify have released a free tool for checking if your iPhone is infected by spyware, so that’s a good starting point.
If All Else Fails Take Your iPhone Issues To The Apple Store
As I stated at the beginning of this article, I never got to the bottom of why my iPhone was restarting randomly. It could easily have been aliens, I determined in the end, as I will never truly know. Seriously though, if you are having any iPhone restart issues that you cannot solve using the suggestions here or others that you have found online, I would recommend heading for the nearest Apple Store and getting them to do an alien-infestation check, or at the very least see ion they can help resolve the problem. Good luck!
