The Facebook app on my IPhone is frozen and won’t do anything! What can I do to fix this problem?
While most of the apps in iOS, whether for the iPhone or iPad, are pretty stable and work every time, some occasionally die and quit or, worse, get “stuck” doing something and end up frozen, seeming forcing you to restart your device to get it to work again.
This is, obviously, a huge drag and if you’re in the middle of a game, video or even a chat, the last thing you want to do is have to restart your device and lose everything.
Fortunately, there’s a better solution if you’re running the latest version of iOS on your device (4.0 or higher): going to the multitasking feature and killing that app, then just restarting it without affecting anything else.
Let me illustrate by using the example you shared of Facebook freezing up…
Here we are in Facebook and things just suddenly…. freeze up.
The trick here is to switch to another app (well, technically you don’t really need to because you can also do this once you’re at the top window, so you can accomplish it either way). Jump out of Facebook by simply tapping once on the home button below the screen on the face of the iPhone or iPad:
I’ll jump into the iPod app because it’s easy and convenient:
Now from here, a double-tap on the home button brings up the multitask manager, which shows which apps are running on your phone along the bottom:
As we might expect, the Facebook app is the most recent app running in the background (the iPod app is still technically in the “foreground” on the iOS device, in case you’re wondering. it’s the reason we had to switch to a different app before we could kill the Facebook app). Good. Tap and hold on the Facebook icon, and after a few seconds…
That’s it. Now tap on the red “-” to the top left of the Facebook icon. That’ll kill the app and move everything else over one slot:
Now tap once on the Home button to get back to the iPod app, then tap again to get to the home screen. One more tap on Facebook and it’ll start up from scratch:
This time it should work fine without any freezes or hiccups.
Note that this technique also works just fine with Apple iPads too…
Hi Dave I am elderly and not very good with iPads yesterday I reset, with help a new password I got an email saying it was successful but when I got home on the icon page fb was dark unlike the others and it said “waiting” but I still am “waiting” and it is still frozen and unable to open. I am desperate to fix it. Everything else works. I would be so grateful Dave for your help. Gail Dickson
Try forcing a restart again, Gail!
While in the news app on iPad air, accidentally tapped something that brought up Facebook. I neither have nor desire Facebook but it wants me to either sign in or create an account and will not go away. Have rebooted to no avail. Please help me get rid of it and back to the news app.
i have twitter stuck on my iphone 6, I have tried everything since uninstall it directly from the iphone thru your method until uninstall it directly from the iTunes but nothing, it let me to uninstall any other app but twitter.
when I try to uninstalle it the app shows (X) I tap it but nothing happens , the app is like greyed out and I cannot access to it or uninstall it
I need support.
Hi there, you with the magical answer to the frozen app problem.
Had an invasive ‘congratulations! We have found you thru your IP and you are selected to join a competition to win a prize!” No exit button..
No matter what I tried could not get rid of them and could not access any of Facebook…. maybe a good thing…?
I have shifted them off my screen – they are in cyberspace!!!
Thankyou!!
Mj
thank you soooo much!!!! love from malaysia.. xoxo <3
I have tried this and when holding down my finger on the Facebook icon the ” – ” never appears. What else can I do to get facebook to work? I have tried deleting and reinstalling app, hard reset, and reseting the phone and app is still frozen.
Denise: On my iPhone 5c I double tap the home button to bring up the apps that are running (including the frozen one). Once the apps are seen, I slide the app up off of the screen which closes the app! takes care of that!
thank you this worked perfectly!
Thank you so much. I was searching for ages but yours was the only advice that I could actually follow and totally fixed the problem. Thanks again 🙂
To the point. Fixed my problem in a minute. Thanks.
THANK YOU!
AWESOME! Thank you!
Great tip. Thanks. It was making me crazy.
Not sure how it can be mediocre if it’s not addressing the situation you’re talking about, Nick.:-) What I’ve found useful in situations where the app is half-downloaded and stalls out is to go to a different wifi network, go into the App Store app, and “update all” again. Seems like it restarts the download. Good luck!
This advice is seriously mediocre. I can’t find a single place on the internet that deals with the real issue I’m having. How do you kill an app that is frozen while downloading or installing? Apple brilliantly set up these types of app to be un-deletable while downloading. Thus, a frozen/stuck/hanging app can’t be deleted after making the apps shaky. The task bar trick from this article works for frozen apps, but not for apps that won’t finish downloading.
Thank you for your help! it is easy once you explained step by step!
thks… easily explained and well it actually worked…buy u a drink one day…
Thank you thank you thank you! It worked to unfreeze Pages. Your directions were easy to follow and I learned something new!
Thanks again.
You are a lifesaver for someone who is not computer/iphone savy. Thanks for all the right answers that are easy to follow.
thanks a lot- worked like a charm to unfreeze Safari
Thank you so much for this article! so helpful and worked right away!
Thanks, man. Works perfectly. Helped me kill off TED just now.
THANK YOU!
Dave,
I did this but am still stuck in the photo’s section on my iphone FB. I can “see all” photos, I can “tag”, “like”, read comments about that photo etc. but I can’t get back to home, there is no home button. I have cleared all apps that were running and rebooted my phone (several times). Any other ideas? Thanks. Ocean
Brilliant, it did not work first time so I tried again…. what a relief!
Thanks so much, saves a trip to the Apple Shop!
It worked!! Thank you so much!!
Thank you so much, it worked, and now if it happens again, I’ll know how to fix it. You’re awesome dude.
Thank you so much! My Gmail was stuck and I couldn’t read anything…what a relief.
Thanks — that worked perfectly!
Not in facebook so can’t use your instruction
Guide or six apps frozen they keep downloading singly thenstopping and going on to another without completion
With kindle for instance it was an update now it’s frozen and I can’t get into my books
The others are either updates or new and are frozen hope you can help Rgds Noel
Spent over 2 hours to solve this, should have come to this site in the first place, worked straight away….. thank you SO MUCH!
thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO much, it worked perfect and i would have NEVER figured that out on my own!!
Hey thanks so much. Not usually very good at reading manuals or following tech directions but was driven by need to communicate given am on yacht w just my I phone and had a frozen FB page. All working again:)
I tried it & it didn’t work for me! The FB app is still frozen & I can’t log out or back in. I can from my computer though.
If we tab on “-” and kill the app, how can we tap once more on facebook app?
Thanks for you help! Worked perfectly!
This information fixed my problem with the photo app sticking on a photo.
Thank you sooooo much, everyone else wanted to be paid, even Apple.
Thanks again,
Tom
Thank you so much for your help! Your pics helped & problem solved within 1 minute! So grateful
Thanks for the tip, Dave. My yahoo app froze and your simple instructions helped solve it. Very helpful!
Nice job! Simple, well explained, and the pictures guaranteed that even an idiot like me could follow along. Thanks a bunch.
thank you for your help!!! An answer on your website helped me with my new ipad2.
Thank you so much, Dave. I just put my iPad through the steps outlined above, and Bingo — all fixed.
Just worked like a charm unblocking the frozen FacBook app on an iPad 2.
That was very helpful! Thank you.
awesome tip! just got the phone, was waiting years for it to come to verizon and that was the only glitch in the matrix, thanks again
Very cool. Worked perfectly and I learned something new. THANK YOU
Ditto what Catherine said. I NEVER would have figured out how to do this on my own. Thank you!!
Kim in Canada
This worked perfectly, and it’s relatively simple and easy to remember – thank you heaps for that =)
I’ve seen the list appear when you “double-tap” the home button, but I always thought it was simply a list of most-recent-used apps. Thanks for pointing out the “extra” feature available. (I’ve had an app lock up, and thought I had to start running other apps until it unloaded the locked one.)