The first thing I always do when an app is crashing on me is to close out of the app in the multitasking tray. This process quits the app in a way that releases it from the processing memory of the device so that when you open it up the next time it starts fresh. All you need to do to close the crashing app from the multitasking tray is to double tap the home button to reveal multitasking mode. You will see the app icon above an app preview window. To close the app, all you need to do is swipe up on the preview window. The crashing app will disappear from the multitasking tray and the app beside it will slide over into it’s place. Now the crashing app has been closed and will open fresh the next time it is launched. Often times this solves a app crash issue in iOS 7, iOS 8 and iOS 9. However, if the app still crashes, go to step 2.

If your app continues to crash even after you have completed step 1, then you should close all of your apps and restart the device. Do all the steps in Step 1 but when you get to the step where you close the app swiping it up and off the screen, do this for all the apps. Often times you may have 5, 10, 20, or more apps that are in the Multitasking Tray. To speed up this process, you can swipe up on 2-3 apps at a time to close all 2-3 apps at once. Then, once you have quit all of the apps, do a hard reset on your iDevice. To do this, simply hold down the Home Button and the On/Off Button (on the top of the device) for about 15 seconds. Wait for the screen to go black and once the Apple Logo appears, then release the Home  Button and the On/Off Button. Let your iOS device start up and try to open the crashing app again. I recommend closing all apps and performing a hard reset every couple of weeks on your device to help maintain the health and speed of the device. See this article for more on this: How to Hard Reset an iOS Device. If the app still crashes after completing step 2, then proceed to step 3.

3. Delete the App and Reinstall it (be sure to backup the device in iTunes before deleting the app if you have files in the app that you need to keep)

The last step in this process is to delete the app and reinstall it. This will help remove any corrupt files. Caution: If you have files that are connected to the app you want to delete, be sure you have copies elsewhere or have a backup of your iDevice on iTunes or iCloud. Deleting the app will delete all the app’s data as well. Once you are sure you have a backup completed, tap and hold on the app you want to delete. The app will begin to wiggle and then you can tap on the black “X” in the upper left corner of the app. Once you have deleted the app, find it in the App Store and reinstall it. If the app was a paid app, you will be able to download and install the app again for free. If the crashing app is a stock app (ie. Mail, Calendar, Messages, etc) then you won’t be able to delete it. Try this tip if the crashing app is a stock app: How to fix Crashing Stock Apps

One additional key component to this step in iOS 7, iOS 8, and iOS 9 is to make sure that you delete the data that the app may store in iCloud as well. Not all apps use iCloud for storage but many do. If an app does use iCloud storage, you will need to delete this in addition to deleting the app itself (Note: just be cautious that you don’t need any of the data synced with iCloud as deleting the iCloud storage for the app will erase the data for that app). For example, I recently had an app that I installed that began to crash every time I opened it. I followed all of the above steps including deleting and reinstalling the app. It still crashed. Then, I realized that the app was syncing data to my other devices via iCloud. I had to delete the app, then delete the app’s data in iCloud, and then reinstall it. This time the app launched without a problem. To delete an app’s iCloud data, open up the Settings App and navigate to iCloud –> Storage and Backup –> Manage Storage. If you don’t see the app listed in the top 5 apps,  tap on Show All. Find the App Data and tap on it. Tap Edit in the upper right corner and scroll down to the bottom and tap on Delete or Delete All. Close the Settings app and open the App Store to reinstall the app that had been crashing. Then, see if it fixed the crash problem for the app in iOS 7, iOS 8, or iOS 9.