iPhone 12 Pro iOS 14 Frequent Camera Crash Problem (Cause found but no fix - related to wallpapers?)

[Cameracrashapalooza]

Thanks for letting us know! got a few questions just to clarify something:

1. you have this issue on the 12 mini and you usually have to restart the phone to use the camera (just like us) but just now you turned off scene detection and you could use the camera after the crash? or can you usually use the camera after it crashed?
2. you restored the backup from the iPhone X where you had this issue for quite some time? is it the exact same crash ?
3. when you say you use the dark mode, i assume you have a lot of apps in the background when switching to it, would you say you switch between light/dark 2-3 times a day?
4. did you ever try a DFU restore and setting up as new at any point on your iPhone X or 12 Mini?

As I said before, a good indication the system is bogging down and a camera crash will follow soon is when you take a picture and swipe the camera up you will have a visual delay. I am at 24h now since my last restart, no wallpaper changing, about 18 apps in the switcher and the camera still swipes up with smoothly with no delay (after taking the picture, which I am doing hourly at least).

Good questions!

1. The first option is correct. Until now, on the 12 mini, once the camera crashed I would not be able to use the camera again until I restarted the phone. Also, until now, when the camera crashed, my Bluetooth would turn off. But when the camera crashed yesterday (after turning off scene detection), my Bluetooth did not turn off and I was able to use the camera after it crashed without restarting the phone.
2. That's right, as far as I can tell, it's the same crash I was having on my iPhone X (and I was experiencing that issue for many months on the X, if not over a year). I did the wifi transfer from the X to my new 12 mini (first time I've ever done that).
3. I work at a daycare, so I usually turn dark mode on during nap time. So essentially I turn dark mode on and off once per day on weekdays. And yeah, I always have a ton of apps in the background.
4. No, I never tried any type of restore/factory reset/setting up as new, because I am extremely lazy.

I do think I've noticed the slight delay, though I'm usually not paying enough attention. Also, I just updated my phone to iOS 14.3 yesterday, so of course my phone restarted. I will report back if/when I get another crash!

P.S. On the Live Photo note, I've always had Live Photos turned off (ever since they introduced it as a feature), so I've also never noticed it saving a video instead of a photo.

 

[yesnoj]

Good questions!

1. The first option is correct. Until now, on the 12 mini, once the camera crashed I would not be able to use the camera again until I restarted the phone. Also, until now, when the camera crashed, my Bluetooth would turn off. But when the camera crashed yesterday (after turning off scene detection), my Bluetooth did not turn off and I was able to use the camera after it crashed without restarting the phone.
2. That's right, as far as I can tell, it's the same crash I was having on my iPhone X (and I was experiencing that issue for many months on the X, if not over a year). I did the wifi transfer from the X to my new 12 mini (first time I've ever done that).
3. I work at a daycare, so I usually turn dark mode on during nap time. So essentially I turn dark mode on and off once per day on weekdays. And yeah, I always have a ton of apps in the background.
4. No, I never tried any type of restore/factory reset/setting up as new, because I am extremely lazy.

I do think I've noticed the slight delay, though I'm usually not paying enough attention. Also, I just updated my phone to iOS 14.3 yesterday, so of course my phone restarted. I will report back if/when I get another crash!

P.S. On the Live Photo note, I've always had Live Photos turned off (ever since they introduced it as a feature), so I've also never noticed it saving a video instead of a photo.

Talking about the BT, i've often to re-enable the BT to synchronize my Garmin. Never had this issue on my Galaxy S10e. The Garmin was always connected, here on iPhone 12 Mini i've to restart the BT to restart the synchronization...bah

 

[spksys]

Little update from me. I passed 48 hours since my last crash/restart.
Used the light theme and the default wallpaper that is on when you first setup the iPhone, just because I liked that one. (never changed wallpaper or theme during this time, they were the same a pre-restart)
I ended up with about 28-30 apps in the switcher and I keep using them (even games)
Took about 68 pictures and some 4k videos during this time, took pictures during video shooting too.
No crashes using the camera, no delays, still swipes up instantly and smoothly after using it.
Everything is running as if it was just reseted and set up as new.
Apps in the background do not clean restart as much when using the camera, Facebook usually gets cleared first everytime, it only did like 3 times now.
Gonna go with dark mode next but use the same wallpaper.

 

[cubanovsky]

Little update from me. I passed 48 hours since my last crash/restart.
Used the light theme and the default wallpaper that is on when you first setup the iPhone, just because I liked that one. (never changed wallpaper or theme during this time, they were the same a pre-restart)
I ended up with about 28-30 apps in the switcher and I keep using them (even games)
Took about 68 pictures and some 4k videos during this time, took pictures during video shooting too.
No crashes using the camera, no delays, still swipes up instantly and smoothly after using it.
Everything is running as if it was just reseted and set up as new.
Apps in the background do not clean restart as much when using the camera, Facebook usually gets cleared first everytime, it only did like 3 times now.
Gonna go with dark mode next but use the same wallpaper.

I am also 48 hours since last restart, had to change my wallpaper 2 times ? but I am all the time on dark mode now. I see slight worst performance right before turning on my camera, when I am taking a first photo it is not taken immediately, it's like 1 second delay. But after that camera work fine for now, but after using it my apps that were in background are reloading.

 

[spksys]

I am also 48 hours since last restart, had to change my wallpaper 2 times ? but I am all the time on dark mode now. I see slight worst performance right before turning on my camera, when I am taking a first photo it is not taken immediately, it's like 1 second delay. But after that camera work fine for now, but after using it my apps that were in background are reloading.

Just to clarify, I am getting some app refresh but not as bad as before.

Did you use dark mode right after restarting or changed it somewhere in between these 48 hours?

Also to put some numbers on what I was experiencing before: 10-20 wallpaper changes per day and ~5 dark mode/light mode changes=never made it past 48 hours without the camera crashing.

When I did the DFU restore I crashed the camera in the first 24 hours with that same behavior.

I am on dark mode and same wallpaper for a few hours now, performance has not changed, I am very surprised but I hope it's not wishful thinking...judging by the past experience I should have crashed by now big time and have decreased performance and slightly warm device.

Aside from the light theme and default wallpaper I am doing everything else as before, I would go as far as to say more intense. I keep reopening everything every hour.

One more thing I remember when the device starts to bog down, the apps you have in the dock will have a stuttering animation when you swipe them closed, especially Safari. Still smooth for me.

I'll stay on dark mode and this default wallpaper for 48 hours more and see if it crashes. For some reason, I expect dark mode to be the culprit more than wallpaper changing but it gets amplified with wallpaper changing...resource locking or memory leak of some sort but this is beyond me.

EDIT: I am using the Usage app from the store, not sure how good it is but I always see that I have 30-60 megabytes of free RAM after a while of using apps, the Camera alwasys clears it up to 1.2 gigabytes or around there, just FYI.

 

[joeblow7777]

It's been just over 2 days for me as well since I last restarted my phone. I have not changed my wallpaper once (which is very hard for me!) and I have been using dark mode the entire time. No crashes so far, but in my experience it usually takes more than 2 days anyway.

 

[cubanovsky]

No crash for me also, stock iOS wallpaper + dark mode. I did change my wallpaper only twice since Tuesday.

 

[spksys]

It's been 74 hours since my last crash/restart. Switched to dark mode 26 hours ago, never changed the wallpaper but since i am using the default wallpaper it did change to dark mode version of itself.

Enabled live photos too, apps get refreshed a bit more often now, since it most likely requires more resources.

Performance still seems rock solid, no lag in the Camera or swiping it up and no crashes.

Still switching between 30+ apps.

I don't know guys...sure seems to me like there might be something to this afterall, at least on my side.

Waiting to see what you guys encounter these days.

 

[joeblow7777]

It's been 3 days for me. Only changed wallpaper once. Been on dark mode the whole time.

No crash. But I've gone close to a week without an incident before, so for me it's still too soon to say if anything is different.

 

[spksys]

It's been 3 days for me. Only changed wallpaper once. Been on dark mode the whole time.

No crash. But I've gone close to a week without an incident before, so for me it's still too soon to say if anything is different.

With my usage the longest I got was close to two days and this is on both iPhones, same exact behavior, at some point I even learned to 100% predict it haha.

We'll see how it goes, can't really do much else about it really, at least I am convinced it's a software issue now because I passed 2 days by only removing wallpaper changing and theme changing from my normal usage.

 

[Cameracrashapalooza]

So, I think I may have identified the root of my issue, though it may not be the case for others.

After I had another camera crash this morning, this time taking down the whole phone, including not being able to use other apps, I looked into my phone’s storage. I noticed an issue that I had also had on my old iPhone X.

In the storage section of my settings app, it showed the Photos app taking up 100+GB more than it should have been. It also showed 145GB in the “Recently Deleted” photos, even though there were actually zero photos in that folder. So basically, my phone was showing that the storage was completely full, even though it shouldn’t have been anywhere close to full. Again, this is a problem I had had on my old phone, and I guess when I transferred the data from the old phone to the new phone, this glitch was transferred too, but I didn’t notice at first.

So I finally bit the bullet and did a factory reset, restoring from an iCloud backup. I backed up my existing photos to Google Photos, deleted all photos from my iPhone, and I did not include photos in the iCloud backup. I reset the phone, restored from the backup (without photo backup), and now the storage is as it should be.

I’ll keep an eye on it over the next week and let you know if I have another crash. I’m pretty sure this was what was causing it for me, though, since it’s a glitch that was consistent between my two phones.

 

[spksys]

So, I think I may have identified the root of my issue, though it may not be the case for others.

After I had another camera crash this morning, this time taking down the whole phone, including not being able to use other apps, I looked into my phone’s storage. I noticed an issue that I had also had on my old iPhone X.

In the storage section of my settings app, it showed the Photos app taking up 100+GB more than it should have been. It also showed 145GB in the “Recently Deleted” photos, even though there were actually zero photos in that folder. So basically, my phone was showing that the storage was completely full, even though it shouldn’t have been anywhere close to full. Again, this is a problem I had had on my old phone, and I guess when I transferred the data from the old phone to the new phone, this glitch was transferred too, but I didn’t notice at first.

So I finally bit the bullet and did a factory reset, restoring from an iCloud backup. I backed up my existing photos to Google Photos, deleted all photos from my iPhone, and I did not include photos in the iCloud backup. I reset the phone, restored from the backup (without photo backup), and now the storage is as it should be.

I’ll keep an eye on it over the next week and let you know if I have another crash. I’m pretty sure this was what was causing it for me, though, since it’s a glitch that was consistent between my two phones.

Who would have thought, I think that was it for you, nice one, I did hear about the camera crashing due to storage issues before.

You didn't really share anything in common with us except dark mode.

And..I guess if you keep doing what you did until now, you should no longer see any crashes.

PS: I am still trying to crash mine, no luck so far.

 

[Cameracrashapalooza]

Who would have thought, I think that was it for you, nice one, I did hear about the camera crashing due to storage issues before.

You didn't really share anything in common with us except dark mode.

And..I guess if you keep doing what you did until now, you should no longer see any crashes.

PS: I am still trying to crash mine, no luck so far.

Good luck! I hope that you all are able to find the source of your glitch!

 

[joeblow7777]

So, I think I may have identified the root of my issue, though it may not be the case for others.

After I had another camera crash this morning, this time taking down the whole phone, including not being able to use other apps, I looked into my phone’s storage. I noticed an issue that I had also had on my old iPhone X.

In the storage section of my settings app, it showed the Photos app taking up 100+GB more than it should have been. It also showed 145GB in the “Recently Deleted” photos, even though there were actually zero photos in that folder. So basically, my phone was showing that the storage was completely full, even though it shouldn’t have been anywhere close to full. Again, this is a problem I had had on my old phone, and I guess when I transferred the data from the old phone to the new phone, this glitch was transferred too, but I didn’t notice at first.

So I finally bit the bullet and did a factory reset, restoring from an iCloud backup. I backed up my existing photos to Google Photos, deleted all photos from my iPhone, and I did not include photos in the iCloud backup. I reset the phone, restored from the backup (without photo backup), and now the storage is as it should be.

I’ll keep an eye on it over the next week and let you know if I have another crash. I’m pretty sure this was what was causing it for me, though, since it’s a glitch that was consistent between my two phones.

I really hope that solves the problem for you!

No way it's storage related on my phone though. I'm only using about 1/3 of my 256GB. This is actually one of the things Apple Support asked me about during one of my three conversations with them.

 

[nlevy90]

I’ve had this problem for a couple months now on my iPhone 12. You’re the only other person I’ve heard of who’s having this issue as well. I restored my phone completely and set up as new, that didn’t fix it. Apple support ran diagnostics, found nothing. I thought that the iOS 14.3 update fixed it, because it didn’t happen for literally a whole month, BUT then yesterday it happened again, so I decided it has to be an issue with the hardware, or else it would have been fixed by the restore or software update or something. So now I’m getting a replacement iPhone from Apple because that seems like the only option.

 

[spksys]

I’ve had this problem for a couple months now on my iPhone 12. You’re the only other person I’ve heard of who’s having this issue as well. I restored my phone completely and set up as new, that didn’t fix it. Apple support ran diagnostics, found nothing. I thought that the iOS 14.3 update fixed it, because it didn’t happen for literally a whole month, BUT then yesterday it happened again, so I decided it has to be an issue with the hardware, or else it would have been fixed by the restore or software update or something. So now I’m getting a replacement iPhone from Apple because that seems like the only option.

Weird stuff. Do you have anything in common with our usage that we described in the last pages?

As an update from my side, it’s been 4 days and 13 hours since my last crash/restart and no issues so far, everything is still rock solid.

I just changed my wallpaper now, couldn’t take it anymore. I noticed it changed instantly, I remember having a small loading animation or text while it was setting up, weird.

How are your phones behaving guys?

 

[joeblow7777]

I’ve had this problem for a couple months now on my iPhone 12. You’re the only other person I’ve heard of who’s having this issue as well. I restored my phone completely and set up as new, that didn’t fix it. Apple support ran diagnostics, found nothing. I thought that the iOS 14.3 update fixed it, because it didn’t happen for literally a whole month, BUT then yesterday it happened again, so I decided it has to be an issue with the hardware, or else it would have been fixed by the restore or software update or something. So now I’m getting a replacement iPhone from Apple because that seems like the only option.

I got a replacement and the camera crash still happened about 6 days later. Therefore, doesn’t seem to be a hardware problem.

 

[joeblow7777]

Weird stuff. Do you have anything in common with our usage that we described in the last pages?

As an update from my side, it’s been 4 days and 13 hours since my last crash/restart and no issues so far, everything is still rock solid.

I just changed my wallpaper now, couldn’t take it anymore. I noticed it changed instantly, I remember having a small loading animation or text while it was setting up, weird.

How are your phones behaving guys?

Over 4 days since I’ve made an effort to change my wallpaper less frequently. No issues so far. You?

 

[liewht]

I have the same camera app crashing issue. Started after 14.3 update and after I started using shortcut automation to change wallpaper periodically. I read the responses on this thread and you guys mention wallpaper changes could be a cause?
I’m thinking could be RAM management. Is there an app to check RAM usage?

 

[cubanovsky]

Still no crash on mine. I did change my wallpaper like 4 times but did not change mode, I am still in dark mode. 12.01.2021 was the day when I started testing.

 

[spksys]

5 days here. Changed my wallpaper once yesterday and from light mode to dark mode 3 days ago. Everything is still smooth and performance still seems as it was just after the restart. very little camera lag but i attribute that to enabling live photo.

 

[liewht]

I had disabled automation to see if it gets better. The automation was set to change wallpaper 7 times a day lol

 

[spksys]

I had disabled automation to see if it gets better. The automation was set to change wallpaper 7 times a day lol

Pretty close to what I had. 10 times a day manual change give or take a few. Never made it past 2 days without crashing the camera permanently every time i tried to take a photo or video on two devices. Can’t put that on coincidence i think, 5 days now.

 

[joeblow7777]

I had disabled automation to see if it gets better. The automation was set to change wallpaper 7 times a day lol

So another frequent wallpaper changer...

There's either some connection here or it's a remarkable coincidence.

 

[AOne1]

So I passed 9days without crashing. My scenario:
1. Turned off life photos.
2. White theme, didn’t change it.
3. 5 apps in the background all the time.
4. Change wallpaper once a day or two.

Today, I was brave enough to turn life photo on and try to take a picture, it went well but after closing camera app it starts to lag af. Seems like it have some memory issues and try to close or kill all the apps in the background. When I turn life photo off, it works smooth again. So my conclusion is life photo feature is the main reason why exactly in my case, camera app crashed. How many of you using this feature and also what you think about it?