How To Fix The 'LG IMS Has Stopped' Error On Your Phone
LG phone owners running a T-Mobile cellular line have been hit by an odd software issue that pushes a pop-up alert on their phone every second, essentially leaving it unusable. The message — which says "LG IMS keeps stopping" or "LG IMS has stopped" — is affecting thousands of LG phone users using old G-series and V-series phones as well as recent models such as the LG Velvet.
User complaints that have popped up online on Twitter and Reddit suggest that restarting or resetting an affected phone does not fix the problem. Taking out the SIM provides a temporary respite, but popping it back again starts showing the same error message on a loop. Users that reached out to T-Mobile and LG's support handles on Twitter were told that the two companies are aware of the problem and that an update on the situation would be provided "later tonight."
For the unaware, IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) is essentially the underlying tech that facilitates services such as voice communications over an IP network. In some instances, the IMS service starts malfunctioning and starts showing up an error that says "IMS services has stopped" on a phone. Putting the device in airplane mode can stop the pop-ups in some cases, but doing so isn't really a viable long-term solution. So far, neither LG nor T-Mobile has provided a solution to the issue that's stuck.
A fix that just might work, for now
One Reddit user has come up with a fix that appears to be working for some of the affected LG phone users. Here are the steps you need to follow:
- Put the affected LG phone in airplane mode by pulling down the notification shade and tapping on the plane icon.
- Putting the phone in airplane mode should stop the IMS error message from popping up.
- Open the phone's settings and tap on Apps and Notifications, followed by App Info.
- On the App Info page, click on the three-dot menu icon in the top-right corner of the screen and tap on Show System.
- Look for and tap "com.lge.ims.rcsprovider" on the next page. Doing so will pull up the pre-installed IMS provider app's detailed overview.
- Once there, tap on the clear cache option, then clear storage, then force stop.
This series of steps may need to be repeated multiple times for the fix to work, at least temporarily. And as per the Reddit thread in question, it might not work for some users at all.
If putting the phone in airplane mode doesn't pause the barrage of pop-ups, the aforementioned steps might not be able to be executed in the first place. Even after the temporary fix process appears to work, some users suggest that the error message re-appears when airplane mode is disabled. In short: We hope LG or T-Mobile delivers a solution to this issue with all speed.