iPhone 12 Stutter Issue When Closing Apps To Display Home Screen

iPhone 12 stutter bug when closing apps

iPhone 12 stutter bug when closing apps


Is your iPhone 12 stuttering when you swipe for the Home Screen? Is the app closing animation lagging, pausing or skipping frames? Are you having the sensation that iOS 14 is stuck for a brief moment, instead of fluently bringing up the Home Screen? No, your mind isn’t playing tricks on you. This is a common glitch occurring on all iPhone 12 models including the 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max.

The iPhone 12 stutter bug plays out in both iOS 14.1, iOS 14.2 as well as iOS 14.2.1. However, the most recent release seems to be the one that glitches less often. Unfortunately, the bug is also present in the current iOS 14.3 Beta version, which hints that either Apple isn’t aware about this, or its developers are still looking for a way to fix it.

How To Fix iPhone 12 Stutter Issue

As mentioned above, the stuttering is caused by an iOS 14 bug. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a reliable workaround that fixes this lagging behavior. We’ll have to wait for Apple to fix it in an upcoming software update. If you want, you can also try some of the troubleshooting tips that we tried out and let us know if you have more success:

1. Reboot iPhone

The easiest fix is to force restart your device and see if a fresh start will filter out the Home Screen animation stuttering issue.
How To: Briefly click and release Volume Up, followed by Volume Down and press & hold the Side Button until the Apple logo is displayed on the screen. Be patient until the iPhone reboots.

2. Remove Widgets

You can attempt to remove all widgets from the Home Screen and eliminate this from the potential iPhone 12 stutter causes. You might think that the lagging is caused by lots of widgets on the Home Screen, that attempt to display glanceable info when you bring up the Home Screen. However, this hasn’t helped us.

3. Disable Settings

We’ve tried to turn on Airplane Mode and disable Wi-Fi, iPhone 12 Pro is still stuttering.
We’ve also turned off Wallpaper Perspective Zoom option in, Settings -> Wallpaper -> Tap on current wallpaper -> Perspective Zoom: Off (by tapping the iPhone icon available at the bottom of the screen). This did not help.

4. Reset Settings

Another option is to reset your iPhone settings. Before you, do make sure that you have a backup in case you want to restore your old setup later on.

  • Open the Settings app.
  • Tap on General and scroll for Reset.
  • Use the Reset Home Screen Layout option.
    Fact: This will obviously reset your Home Screen to the default setting, but could also remove the iPhone 12 stutter bug.
  • You can go even further and Reset All Settings.

5. Restore iPhone

We’ve also tried to erase the iPhone and restore it from a backup, but it did not help. So, we don’t recommend you to try these rather extreme method.
Fact: We even tried to restore iPhone as new, not from a backup, but the stutter is still happening!

Conclusion: It seems that the iPhone 12 stutter bug starts occurring when multiple apps are open and running in the background. Apparently the RAM is filled up and a glitch is preventing iOS 14 from properly managing the RAM issue. This causes the device to freeze for a very brief time, bringing up the stuttering ‘effect’.

Did you manage to improve the iPhone 12 stuttering issue using some other fix? Don’t hesitate to share it with us. Use the comments section. Please mention your iPhone model and the iOS version that you’re using.

Related: Other common iPhone 12 issues are:
iPhone 12 No Service, poor signal and dropped calls problem.
– iPhone 12 Pro Max not charging wirelessly with MagSafe.
iPhone 12 yellow screen issue.
iPhone 12 Pro Max microphone not working excepting normal phone calls and FaceTime.
– iPhone 12 Pro Max touch screen problems.