[iMore Question]

I get a grey oblong with a 0:00 covering where you type your text message. The only way I can clear it is to restart my phone.

[lackster2]

What model phone do you have? On my 4S the keyboard really takes up a lot of space?

[bodhi123]

This helped me. In another forum, dturner6411 suggested:

The easiest way to get the grey bar to go away is to double tap the home button and swipe up on the messages page to dismiss it. Then choose messaging again and it goes right back to your message minus the grey bar. It just closes messaging and reloads it