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When I updated to iOS 18.1, I joined the Apple Intelligence waitlist.

The request to download Intelligence was approved within 5-8 minutes, and it started downloading.

There was a small status update at the bottom that said something along the lines of Downloading… [x]%, but it pretty quickly jumped to a hundred percent and disappeared.

Now, it’s stuck in preparing the update, update Where it’s been for around eight hours.

I’ve tried changing the iPhone region, language, and Siri language to something other than the US, then back, which hasn’t helped. The download status started again at 0%, but jumped to a 100% and got stuck on the Preparing status again, where it’s remained. Restarting the phone doesn’t change anything.

How can I troubleshoot and fix this activation?

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  • Is your geographic location outside the US? (Say a proper US account but you’re traveling in Europe.)
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Oct 29 at 16:26
  • @bmike No, I’m geographically in the US and my iPhone settings reflect that.
    – DaemonsMercy
    Commented Oct 29 at 18:15
  • Sounds good - feel free to edit my post or make an answer once you get past the rush of early adopters for this beta release. Bummer if my suggestion to get on a different network connection via an airplane mode reboot didn’t help. A lot of good things happen when you restart with no network, you run the app that sees an offline state then connect to a new network.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Oct 29 at 18:23

2 Answers 2

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This sort of server side issue is something you can’t normally fix.

Apple is being very strategic in rolling this out in stages, and it’s also so new it’s not even clear which bucket this service will be reported when the API is logging errors or the service is degraded.

The download is very small, so this is likely a handshake issue between your device and Apple servers.

In the absence of a specific fix, I would put the phone in airplane mode, restart and see what the screen says.

Then connect to a different network (cellular if you used WiFi) and enable networking and let it sit for a moment.

I would 100% avoid switching regions or languages as this beta is just rolling out and if you try to start in one region and then complete in another, who knows what bugs you may discover. (Specifically, Apples servers have to process your region change across all their servers and then back, and you might have other things to download to your device due to this change.)

I 100% recommend chatting with Apple support. They will know how things are going and when to make a cup of tea (and just wait it out) and when to try things specific on your device.

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  • I changed region and language because of this thread.
    – DaemonsMercy
    Commented Oct 29 at 15:05
  • I understand the desire to “jiggle the handle” by selecting a region where they can’t get this download to attempt it a second time, but Apple clearly built in a retry mechanism and why not just wait for that? Knowing how these backends are designed, I would not recommend that. I do recommend letting the device start with no network, that also registers a “hard failure” and will retrigger the download immediately without changing all your services to a new region. If your network is slow, you’ve now put yourself at the back of the download line instead of getting a shortcut.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Oct 29 at 15:18
  • I turned on airplane mode and powered off the device like you suggested, then powered it back on and changed what WiFi option I was using (previously cellular, then WiFi) but it didn't start the download over at 0% - I opened the Settings app, and it still said Preparing. I tried that twice total, the second time starting on WiFi before airplane mode and then switching to cellular after).
    – DaemonsMercy
    Commented Oct 29 at 18:27
  • Bummer. Did it say preparing when you restarted in airplane mode and checked settings before the network switched on? I can’t test since all my devices have made it past this step @Daemons
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Oct 29 at 18:32
  • Yes, it kept the Preparing status the whole time.
    – DaemonsMercy
    Commented Oct 29 at 18:35
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It downloaded.

I decided to try connecting to a different WiFi network, which ended up working - a couple minutes after I switched to the new network, I got a notification that said it had installed, and it works after testing.

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