Question - iOS - Apps stop working all of a sudden

[tim_lane]

Hi all,

Has anyone had any issues with apps just randomly stopping to work?

So we've got an iPad program and they are all managed by the JSS.
There have been a couple of times where apps will just stop working completely. So what will happen is when you go to launch the app, a grey screen pops up for a second or two and then the app closes.

The only way we have found to fix this is reinstalling the app.

Now this isn't the best option as if we need to do it to an app that holds local data, it's all gone.

Has anyone come across this before?
Or possibly even knows a way to reinstall w/o losing the local data?

Thanks!

Tim

[Hobbs155]

Hi Tim,

We had the same issue, we had to turn of the "Auto App Update" Feature in JSS off, for some reason when JSS tried to autoupdate it breaks the app, with device based assignments its easy to work around but its annoying.
Goto "Settings" -> Mobile Device Management -> App Updates and untick the box.
There should already be a defect notice for it under D-009792
Best to let jams support know aswell.

[RLR]

As Hobbs said, this is caused by the auto app update feature but I thought it was fixed in a recent Casper/IOS update. This was only affecting IOS 9.2 or so I thought?

[murph]

@tim.lane We are randomly having this issue after a device assigned app is updated. Currently we are working with support on this. All are devices are iOS 9.3.1 and greater and JSS 9.91 (now 9.92).

[nsdjoe]

@tim.lane We were having this issue when our devices were on iOS 9.2 (app crashing and requiring a reinstall to "fix" it). However, once we updated our devices to iOS 9.3.1 the issue was resolved. We haven't had the issue since. Apps launch without any problem and app updates can be installed via Self Service (or for auto installed apps, updates are auto installed). We are running JSS 9.91 and have auto app updates turned on.

~Joe

[bpavlov]

@Hobbs155 For what its worth, D-009792 was fixed in 9.9. Defect description:
Clicking the Force Update button no longer fails to update an app that failed to update automatically and causes the app to quit unexpectedly requiring the app to be installed again.

[tim_lane]

@bpavlov @nsdjoe @smurphyusd346 @RLR @Hobbs155

Thanks for the replies guys!

I've completely disabled App Updates and am just evaluating it.

It might take a while for the issue to come up, but I will keep you guys updated on this :)

[tim_lane]

@bpavlov @nsdjoe @smurphyusd346 @RLR @Hobbs155

After doing some further testing RE this, I found out that the devices that were having this issue pop up were still on 9.2.1!

<headdesk/>

Thanks guy :)

[St0rMl0rD]

Yeah, we're seeing similar cases where managed apps crash even with iOS 9.2.1. My guess is that the app was installed on iOS 9.2, and then wasn't updated after the iOS was updated. So far we haven't had any data loss, because it was only Google apps that were crashing (one of the few managed apps that we've deployed so far), but we're switching over to device based app distribution for all of our iOS apps (180 or so) in 2 weeks, so we might have a few more, but hopefully not.

[Hobbs155]

@tim.lane after updating to the latest iOS did it fix the problem? We are waiting until we can get hold of our ipads to update to latest version then might try and turn the auto-update back on again.

[murph]

We did not turn on auto update until our clients were on 9.3. We still are seeing occasional app crashes at launch, but it's completely random.

[timlings]

I, too, am seeing this. I have turned off app updates globally, but have it turned on for each managed app individually.