Your iPhone Can Crash If You Type These Four Characters
A newly discovered odd character bug can cause your iPhones and iPads to briefly crash. This bug is triggered by typing just four characters on your iOS device. On Wednesday,a security researcher foundthat typing“”::characters in the App Library or Settings app can cause the iPhone’s home screen interface, Springboard to crash.
As pointed out byTechCrunch, you only need to type “”: followed by any fourth character to trigger the bug. So, it’s something related to the first three characters of the string. According to iOS security researchers, this is not a security issue and there’s “no evidence yet to suggest anyone other than an iOS device owner manually typing the characters could trigger this bug.”
We tested it on multiple iPhones runningiOS 17andiOS 18 beta. On iOS 17, typing these characters in the Settings app search field will cause the app to crash. In the App Library, these four characters crashed the Springboard and showed a black screen for 1-2 seconds. However, typing these characters in the Spotlight search didn’t have any impact. On iOS 18, the characters didn’t do a respring. However, they just closed the Settings app in a fraction and opened it back as usual. Also, the Spotlight search did freeze very briefly, but there was no crash.
It’s worth knowing that this crash or respring is not a full reset, soit won’t delete your data.Your iPhone will take a few seconds to be functional again.Also, it doesn’t seem to affect any app or feature on your iPhone or iPad. So, it’s not as big of a problem as some older character bugs that spread through Messages and let people repeatedly crash other users’ iPhones. Talking about this bug, users will rarely enter “”:: on their iPhones or iPads, unless they are doing it purposely.
Apple hasn’t commented on this character bug yet. If the issue becomes widespread, Apple will hopefully address it with an iOS update in the near future.
Kanika Gogia
Kanika has been a loyal iPhone user since 2014 and loves everything Apple. With a Master’s in Computer Applications, passion for technology, and over five years of experience in writing, she landed at Beebom as an Apple Ecosystem Writer. She specializes in writing How To’s, troubleshooting guides, App features, and roundups for Apple users to help them make the best use of their gadgets. When not writing, she loves to try out new recipes and enjoy some family time.
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