There is a new character bug that can result in a respring on the iPhone or iPad, reports TechCrunch. Typing “”:: in the search field after swiping over to the App Library will cause the Springboard to reset, dropping you back at the ?iPhone?’s Lock Screen. A respring is not a full reset, and it only takes a few seconds for the ?iPhone? to be functional again.
Typing the same characters into the Settings app search interface will cause the Settings app to crash, but putting it in a Spotlight search doesn’t seem to impact anything. The respring seemed to only happen on devices running iOS 17 when we tested, but putting those characters into a search interface on a device running iOS 18 does result in some odd behavior, such as the characters disappearing and the Settings app crashing.
You can actually type in just “”: and any other character to cause the respring to happen, so it’s something related to the first three symbols in a four character sequence.
Character bugs have in the past spread though Messages and have allowed users to crash the iPhones of others, but this is a much more insignificant issue because the ?iPhone? owner needs to manually type (or paste) the characters into a search interface. There does not appear to be a way to affect an ?iPhone? through Messages or another texting platform.
It’s likely Apple will address the issue with an iOS update in the near future.This article, “PSA: There’s a New Character Bug That Can Cause iPhones to Crash” first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums
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Author: Juli Clover