New Symbol on IPad top right near battery indicator

Can I add to this with my experience and it might make some sense. This only appeared on my iPad on the 3rd January 2025 which is a relevant date. We changed from copper wire to fibre optic cable on that day. As soon as we were up and running the little icon appeared. Is it possible this means you are connected to fibre optic network not cable anymore? Just my four pennies worth. Hope this helps.

CathPr wrote:

This annoying symbol occurred this morning and no matter what I did persisted while I was trying to download three pdfs. It stopped the download on my iPad. However I downloaded the same pdfs on my iPhone with no problem and no symbol. Is this an Apple bug?

Apple have not yet offered any clarification regarding this new status icon or its specific meaning. All that we know, at this time, is that the icon indicates an incomplete download/synchronisation task.

I have that symbol too! On my iPad Air 4. It popped up when I downloaded a book and hasn’t gone away. Also, my screen went black and I had a tiny white circling symbol pop up in the middle of my screen for like 10 seconds. Then, my screen came back on but I was now at my Lock Screen. This all happened within the last 20 minutes.

Apple engineers were not able to reproduce this, and were not able to determine what it is or where it comes from exactly; so they can’t take responsibility for it either; however, it has shown up briefly twice on the same machine it’s always shown up on, but this time only while a down load is in progress and then it disappears when that’s done; previously it would stick around for days, and only go away after a hard reset or remote screen access with Apple; during this process, Apple ran a full diagnostic on my machine and found nothing suspicious; it seems to be a harmless mystery to Apple - they don’t seem worried about it at all.

emarybear wrote:

Just wondering if someone got any definitive answers on this?

my symbol has been there for 3 days now and is pulsing light blue/dark blue.

(not sure that if its downloading or syncing it should take that long?)

To the best of my knowledge, Apple have not yet offered any clarification regarding this new status icon or its specific meaning.

At this time, other than its unexpected appearance, there have been no reports of unexpected behaviour.

This annoying symbol occurred this morning and no matter what I did persisted while I was trying to download three pdfs. It stopped the download on my iPad. However I downloaded the same pdfs on my iPhone with no problem and no symbol. Is this an Apple bug?

I’m a bit late to the discussion, but I had this symbol pop up yesterday morning, and that same morning had gotten an alert that I could update for my iPad (my organization reviews updates before we can download or install them.)

So last night I told it to install the update (the symbol was still there when I plugged it in), and lo and behold, this morning the symbol was gone. I’ll check back later to see if it comes back but currently it’s not there. If it does come back I’ll make another reply and let y’all know.

what does this blue one mean? Suddenly I’m seeing this. Also my iPad is refusing to charge.

Look at the original screen shot, it even shows even shows an active download while also showing the concerning icon. Please get better at life.

This status icon appears, usually only briefly, when connecting some USB-C hubs or other USB-C accessories to the iPad.

Thank. Yes it us brief but the iPad does not want to charge so I wondered if it meant something else.

I should also add, I have since updated my iPhone in case it was ‘trying to sync’. No change, still just pulsing away and freaking me out.

How do I cancel the download?