I'm sure posting this message is going to jinx me, but I
think I may have found a workaround for the stuttering issue. I've been completely stutter-free on 16.3.1 for over 4 days now (which is a record for me - I was getting about 8-12 hours after a reboot). However, if anyone else here would like to try this as well, it would be good to have a sanity check.
A brief background: I had this animation stuttering issue when swiping up to go home on iOS 15 as well. I happened to stumble across a fix by complete accident. If you recall, iOS 15 would display the location arrow to the right of the clock a lot more than 16 does. I would see some people would have the icon of their focus mode up there to the right of the clock instead (such as the half moon for DND, the bed for sleep, etc) but mine was always just showing the location arrow. Finally I decided to try to figure out why I was always seeing the location icon and learned that if you have any apps set to be allowed to ALWAYS use your location, iOS 15 would always show that icon continuously. I had two apps set that way, so I changed their permissions to only use location when the app or widget is in use. It fixed the icon situation, be to my surprise, it also fixed the stuttering - a 100% fix! The rest of my iOS 15 days were completely stutter free. I also verified that turning at least one app back to always allow location would bring the stuttering back.
Unfortunately, with the release of iOS 16, this trick no longer worked. The stuttering is back, however, I can't help but think it is still somehow related to location. Last week, I saw a post about some of Apple's tips to reduce battery drain. That led me to making the following changes:
Location
- Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services
- Find any app set to always use location and change it to "While Using"
- Tap on System Services, then scroll down to the Product Improvement section and turn off iPhone Analytics
Analytics
- Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements
- Turn all off (I still have the top one on to share iPhone & Watch Analytics, but it's up to you)
Keyboard Haptics
- Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback
- Turn off Haptics
Background App Refresh
- Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh
- Turn off the master switch at the top to disable all background refreshing
These are the 4 changes I made and as I mentioned above, I have been at a record 4+ days on iOS 16 without a single stutter. Are all 4 required? Not sure. Possibly, or it could just be a combination of a few of them. I'm hesitant to change any of them back yet because I want to see if it will continue to not stutter. I will also note that battery life has been significantly better. Mostly likely due to disabling background app refreshing. I was a little hesitant to do this at first, but after reading more about it, I learned that it doesn't break anything. Apps can still send alerts, etc. It simply stops them from doing some unnecessary tasks in the background (like Twitter continuing to load tweets, for example). The apps will just do these tasks when you launch them again. The other one I didn't want to turn off was keyboard haptics. This is one of my favorite new features of iOS 16, but since it is new to iOS 16, it could be a potential culprit. If all goes well, I may try turning this one back on and see if the stuttering starts again. So, if anyone else is frustrated enough by the stuttering to give these changes a try, let me know how it goes for you. Also, let me know if you were able to eliminate the stuttering by only making some of these changes. It would be great to know what the magic combination really is!