iPadOS 15: stuck in a loop after OS update

I have the exact same issue here on my 2018 iPad Pro 11" since last night!

Not the beta. I have never tried any beta. Just straight forward updated from iOS 14 to 15.

And on my iPhone's "Find My" the iPad is apparently "offline" not sending its location status to the server.

Unbelievable that this happened with a official release of iOS 15... I really need to fix it ASAP but have not found a solution yet.

I had exactly the same issue a day after the official release of iPadOS 15 on my iPad Air 3. The only way to get out of this problem is downloading the 14.8 firmware and restore that image to the iPad.

During all the years I've been using Apple devices this is the first time it failed so badly.

Extra frustrations because of iTunes not working on Windows due to some problems with the latest release. But those are fixed.

@Corlation you will have to restore your iPad. Reboot it, then get it into recovery mode, then restore 14.8 to the device. I hope you have a backup in iCloud, because this process will absolutely kill all the data on the iPad.

Same problem here with iPad Pro after updating from 14.8 to 15 official release. As soon as I would enter my password to unlock after the upgrade, it would loop a couple of times, flashing the time on the screen between each loop. After about 5 loops it would then restart.

I really wasn’t keen on having to remote erase or do the recovery mode restore. Not at all how I wanted to start my morning.

I was able to get mine working pretty simply in the end. After it had gone through another one of its looping and restart cycles, and when sitting at the welcome screen (where it cycles through languages, and before attempting to enter password to unlock) All I did was press and release the Volume up then Volume down buttons, then press and hold the Sleep/Wake button - the option to Power Off came up pretty quickly. I powered it off, started the iPad up again and it came back up and loaded correctly. Took me straight to the Your IPad Has Been Updated msg and was able to go on happily from that point on. IPadOS 15 loaded correctly and all is working as it should be.

I may have just been lucky. My solution may only work on the 2018 IPad Pro. I’ll try upgrading my iPad Mini 4 next and see. But it’s definitely worth giving it ago before attempting a remote erase or doing the recovery mode restore options.

I came here to say the same thing about updating to IOS 15 from 14.8. Restart sees the apple and after login with passcode, goes into a vicious loop until a quick pink screen flash before it turns off.

Id rather not have to resort to recovery mode or .dmg. This is not acceptable to have to perform such specific steps to get my iPad to boot up.

FRUSTRATING since I usually know better to update so quickly.

Same issue on the 2020 11” iPad Pro

Solution (At least in my experience):

After the springboard has gone through its loop and you’re back at the Lock Screen shutdown the iPad. Then disconnect all accessories including Magic keyboard + Apple Pencil and reboot. Enter password and everything should work as per without erasing data or manually starting from scratch etc.

Cheers

I had this problem both with upgrade to 14.8 to 15 and 14.8 to 15.0.1 on iPad 6th Gen. In each case I had the springboard boot loop immediately after upgrade as soon as I input the unlock PIN. Both times, I had to manually downgrade to 14.8 to get it working again and restore from backup. It seemed to me that some setting was causing the loop, so I used "reset all settings" and THEN did the OTA upgrade from 14.8 to 15.0.1 and it worked perfectly. Kind of a pain, but better than having to set everything back up from scratch since no app data is deleted with "reset all settings".

Same problem here with an iPad 2019 that has been updated to iOS 15.0.1. The error can be reproduced quite accurately by simply starting any app and pressing the Home button. After 4-5 attempts at the latest, it falls into the loop of soft reset and pin code entry until it is forcefully switched off and restarted.

I had the problem too. After a few attempts at a soft reset, I contacted support. Since I had all the data in the cloud, I was also ready to use a hard reset or backup. And with that it worked.

1. Start iTunes and connect iPad Mini 5 to the computer
2. iPad restarted with Power + Home
3. At the Apple logo just hold Home button until the recovery mode is displayed
4. The computer should now recognize the iPad and display a message that an error was detected with the update and a new update must be loaded
5. iTunes loads iPadOS 15.0.2 - Again, an error was detected after the update was applied
6. iPad Restore - Last backup selected and installed
7. After the backup was set up again I had a working iPad Mini 5 with stable iPadOS 15.0.2.

Hope it helps you.

ISSUE SOLVED!

Hi folks, I had the same issue after upgrading my 11" iPad Pro (2nd Gen.) from iPadOS 14.8 to 15.0.2. Re-installing the OK in DFU mode did not help. I restored my iCloud backup on another iPad running iPadOS 14.8 to get back to work as soon as possible and left my bricked iPad alone for a couple of days.

Today, I used DFU mode once again to install iPadOS 15.1 on the device. Afterwards, I was greeted with a white screen stating that it was trying to restore my data. I honestly did not expect anything good from this, but after a couple of minutes my beloved lock screen showed up and I was actually able to log in again without ending up in a respring loop! The iPad ran a bit slow and several apps refused to launch, but after a quick reboot everything was back to normal. Well, except my home screens which have been totally messed up by a couple of automatically set-up widgets...

tl;dr: iPadOS 15.1 seems to fix this issue. If you have not reset your "bricked" device yet, you may have a very good chance to get it back to normal by installing 15.1 in DFU mode.