iPad Air Becomes Unresponsive and Repeatedly Locks After Sitting Idle
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MellowPine47
My M2 iPad Air sometimes becomes completely unresponsive after sitting idle for several hours, even when it has plenty of charge. Tapping the display or pressing the Home button does nothing for a few minutes, and I occasionally have to force-restart it. Once it finally wakes up, it may shut down and lock itself repeatedly, sometimes only a few seconds apart, and the cycle can continue for a while. The iPad is running iPadOS 26.6, and its battery health is listed as normal at 89%. Does this sound more like a battery problem, a software bug, or a hardware fault?
Answers
The first thing to check would be whether the iPad is running the latest available software, since sleep and wake problems can sometimes come from iPadOS. However, if the issue continued after updating, it may be more than a simple update problem. Repeated shutdowns and lock cycles could point to a system or hardware fault, so backing up the iPad and having Apple run diagnostics would be sensible.
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MellowPine47: I suspected an update might fix it, but the problem continued after updating. It is currently on iPadOS 26.6.