Pokemon Go is now available on iOS and Android devices. (Nintendo)
Over the past few weeks, Pokemon Go has become much less prone to glitches and bugs thanks to many updates from Niantic Labs. But a few problems still remain, one of which is when the app stops loading information from the server while a spinning white Poke Ball appears in the top left. What is this bug, and can it be fixed in any way?
The spinning white Poke Ball generally appears any time the game is loading, and so it usually is not associated with anything bad. But it can often herald a sudden crash, and many players are experiencing issues where the game completely stops loading anything right after the white ball appears.
Unfortunately, at the moment the only real solution is to force close the Pokemon Go app and reopen it again. On an iPhone, to force close the app, simply hit the home button twice and swipe up on the app. On an Android, go to settings, apps, running, click the Pokemon Go app and hit “force stop.”
Hopefully, the game didn’t freeze on you during a particularly important moment, but once you reload the app, you should be able to pick back up where you left off. It’s unclear what’s causing this problem, though it might have something to do with the game struggling to fetch data from the servers when the player is in an area with poor cellphone reception. However, it can sometimes occur when on Wi-Fi, suggesting something else might be happening here.
This glitch has actually been around since the game launched, but it seems to have become a bit more pronounced since the most recent update, Reddit users have observed. Some players said that they hadn’t had the problem in a few weeks, but they began experiencing it again after this week’s patch to the game. Even if there’s not a great solution at the moment, then, know that it’s not just you, and you shouldn’t worry about any issues with your phone or connection.
Hopefully, Niantic will be able to fix this glitch in a forthcoming update; they have gotten much better at addressing problems than they were when the game first launched, and based on their most recent patch schedule, we should expect another update to the game on Monday, September 5th.