Can't drag the cursor up in text messages on new iphone 15 Pro iOS 17

Thank you for alerting us! I just installed 17.2 and the problem is completely gone. Now I will have to find new dragons to slay! Nice impact of this bug has been discovering the most pleasant online user community I have encountered in quite some time. 👏👏🥂🍻🎖️🥇🏆

The easiest way to deal with the cursor not moving up to the top of the screen is to tap on the text at the bottom of the screen until you get a large chunk of text to light up blue. Cut the blue highlighted text. You will now have enough room on the screen to move the cursor up to the top for editing. Once done editing, paste the deleted text back to the bottom of your message. Works for me.

I have an iPhone 12 mini with 17.1.1. The cursor problem is driving me nuts.

The only thing that seems to work for me, fairly consistently: at the bottom of the message below the text, hold down the spacebar until everything turns gray. Then you can move the cursor back up to the upper part of the message. Then it seems to work more or less OK. The solution is not 100% but it is the best I have been able to find. The whole problem is absolutely crazy and inexcusable.

This works for me - tap where you want to edit, and although the view flips back down to the bottom of the message at first, when you start typing, it switches back to the correct spot and you can edit… provided you did tap on the correct spot in the first place.

Not that this is ok. It’s frustrating and inefficient- if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Apple. It is completely ridiculous this hasn’t been fixed. This was identified as a problem here months ago.

Anyway, the fix I suggest above works for me. Not that I’m particularly happy about it, because it’s still very “hit or miss.”

[Edited by Moderator] 

Tech challenged,

download iOS 17.2, released today. It solved the issue on my iPhone 13.

Horton1 wrote:

The issue of not being able to edit long texts is really annoying, but I have been able to get around it by copying my text, pasting it to email, editing there, then pasting back on my text. We shouldn't have to do this, but hopefully it's a temporary fix.

Or, you could use Notes. It's very easy to share text from Notes to Messages using the share option.

Per your suggestion, I too just updated to iOS 17.1 and the cursor problem appears to be fixed. Yay!

I have exactly the same issue. However, if I turn my phone sideways I can then access the top of the message to edit. Not ideal, but a quick fix.....

THIS WORKS!!! I just tried to edit a long text. I tapped between two words at the beginning. The cursor moved down to the end, as it’s been doing - BUT it moved up to the correct spot once I started typing (then you can see the cursor where it should be). Thank you so much for posting this!

I, too, am going crazy trying to edit long text messages ever since updating to iOS 17. It seems that you can only edit text that fits into the initial text message block. Once there is a need to scroll higher, you are out of luck and cannot edit the text that lurks above the block. I tried all of the suggested fixes, but they do not help. I was glad to discover that I am not the only experiencing this problem, but I really hope that Apple addresses this bug asap.

Genius wasn’t aware of it. He thought poss my phone. I asked if he was on iOS 17 - after establishing he was, asked him to emulate on his own phone to demonstrate not my phone. Same thing happened on his. Nice chap but wasn’t too phased as said he didn’t write long messages.. (Obvs, not the point.) He said he’d flag it and assumed it would get sorted out in an update.

As I say, is also more than failing to be able to locate cursor when editing at top of longer messages. There’s fundamental problem with the functioning of the cursor generally. These issues are consistent across iOS 17, 17.1, 17.1.1

Would be great if Apple replied to this post and gave an update of where they were with this problem(s). Because, as we agree, it is rather fundamental.

I have an iPhone 12 mini with iOS 17.1.1. Unfortunately, though your suggestion worked for me a couple times, it is not consistent… just like everything else we have tried! I have had weird cursor jumping problems in other apps besides Messages, but of course, long text messages are where it is really a problem. Someone mentioned iOS 17.2. I hope that actually becomes a reality soon and that it will fix the issue.

I do find that pressing return at the very end of my message, then, with the cursor right below the text, pressing on the space bar until it turns gray, and then using that to move the cursor around, that has worked fairly consistently for me. I really appreciate all the effort that the community of iPhone users are putting into workarounds. It would be nice to hear from someone at Apple.

This fix did NOT work when IOS 17.0 (and probably 17.1) came out. Instead, the cursor would bounce back down to the visible text, even though I tapped on text further up (but was then invisible once the keyboard popped up). However, I just tried this again on 17.1.1 and indeed, if I tap on a spot in a paragraph high up, the cursor disappears along with the text, but if I type <space>, for example, the text and cursor reappear. This is usable, at least, but still VERY disappointing and annoying.

Having been a longtime Android user until 4 years ago, with the Android community not only pointed out bugs, but helping to fix them, it seems that now that Apple owns > 50% of the market in the U.S., maybe they're too big for their own good, or too big to care, or simply too big to swiftly get to bugs in a timely manner with the Apple workers alone. Perhaps a hybrid model, where they have a trusted community contribute to bug fixes, validated by Apple. Just a thought. Trying to do EVERYTHING YOURSELF leads to a slowing of progress and a lack of innovation. Just my opinion, even though no one asked. ;-)

The only other workaround I have found is: when you are at the bottom of the message, hit return, or move the cursor just below the message. Then press down on the space key until the keyboard turns gray, then you can guide the cursor with your finger and get where you need to go. Absolutely ridiculous, but it has worked for me sometimes.