In general, checking that your iPhone is up to date is a good idea of guaranteeing that most of your device’s apps and features are running smoothly. However, even having the latest version of iOS installed can sometimes produce bugs that may render certain services temporarily unusable. If you inexplicably lose the ability to send messages through the Messages app, this may be the case.
Although this type of mishap is mostly out of your control, there are a number of things you can try to see if you can fix the glitch on your end. You can force-quit the Messages app by slowly swiping up on your iPhone screen to see all your open apps, swiping left or right to get to Messages, and swiping up on the app to exit it. You can also restart your iPhone by long-pressing on the side button and the volume down button simultaneously until you can slide the power button slider to turn your device off. Once you turn the iPhone back on, you can try opening the Messages app again to see if the refresh fixed the problem.
In addition, you may also want to check Apple’s System Status page to see if there are any outages to relevant apps or services. For instance, if you see that iMessage is down, you may need to wait until Apple resolves the technical difficulties.
