App Permanently in "Waiting" Mode

Last night, one of my apps started updating automatically, but went into permanent "waiting" mode. It has been this way for a day now.

I have tried the following:

1. Touching the icon: nothing happens.

2. Restarting the iPhone: no progress.

3. Deleting the app and re-downloading: it won't let me delete it (the confirmation comes up and it still won't go away).

What more can be done here? I'm thinking of plugging it into the computer, but this isn't a phone I sync with a computer so I'd like to avoid that if possible.

FYI: The phone is an iPhone 5S, running the latest iOS version, 16GB model with more than enough room to update (I even went ahead and deleted old photos and apps I wasn't using in a futile effort to get this update to happen).

Hi Scott

I'm no expert on this, but I can offer a few comments and questions.

When you say it "won't let you delete the app" — I presume you do the usual thing: hold your finger down on any app until they all start to wobble & a little "x" appears superimposed on all the apps. You then tap the "x" corresponding to the one you want to delete. In what way does it stop this action?

You have restarted the iPhone, but you have tried a "hard" reboot — hold the on/off and home buttons down together until the iPhone switches off and begins the restart cycle.

Have I properly understood your problem? The app is still there, won't go away/can't be deleted?

It's a pity in a way that you hadn't got into the habit of syncing your iPhone with iTunes because you could have done a "restore" via iTunes and restored the iPhone from an earlier backup (BU).

Have you any form of BU? Say, iCloud?

Please post back.

Ian

Yes--I do the same thing I do when deleting every app. This worked to get rid of other apps.

I have done the hard reboot twice now--to no avail.

Yes, the app is there--with a grayed-out icon with "waiting" underneath it--and cannot be deleted and doesn't update. This has been there for about 48 hours now.

I don't have any direct backup here. I just don't want to lose my photo library by syncing the phone. Everything else on here is expendable plus my texts sync with my Mac.

I'll throw a wild guess in here. Is your phone on cellular data or wifi? The app should install once you have a wifi connection.

It's sitting in a wi-fi network now and always charges in one. It's actually been on a few other wi-fi networks since this problem came up.

I tried disabling and then enabling wi-fi. No luck there.

UPDATE: I finally bit the bullet and plugged it into a Mac. I made sure that it wouldn't sync things one way or another--I don't want photos clogging up hard drive space on my Mac and I don't want music clogging up the iPhone. I left the sync only to apps.

First, I did a sync as usual. No dice. The app was still there.

Next, I requested an uninstall of the app from the Mac. It actually did that.

Then, I installed the app from the Mac. It installed...but gave me a really old version of the app!! I'm assuming it's a version that was backed up from my iPod Touch, which is stuck on iOS 6.

The app worked, even in its old version. I had to manually update it and it did install correctly.

A lot of weirdness with some weird workarounds...but the problem got fixed.

One way to prevent any glitches occurring on your phone during updates is to do them first on your Mac and later sync to the phone. I've been doing it that way for years without any problems whatsoever. And that was even when I had a 16 GB iPhone 5c.

Glad you got a result, Scott.

Ian