Watch out for these four characters that crash iPhones

© Cottonbro

A few years ago, we came back to a new “Text Bomb” that was raging on our iPhones, a small string of characters, sent via a message, the simple display of which immediately causes a crash of the terminal. At the time. It was a message in Sindhi characters, and the simple display of the notification (attesting to the arrival of the message) was enough to crash the iPhone. Today, a new bug was discovered that causes the iPhone to crash when you type four characters in a certain order.

Beware of this sequence of characters on your iPhone!

In fact, a computer security researcher recently discovered that a simple sequence of characters could cause problems for Springboard, the software responsible for the home screen of our iPhones. And no need for Sindhi characters this time, since they are completely “classic” characters, which we use daily.

Don't panic though, unlike a “Text Bomb”, the bug discovered recently will not crash your iPhone, but simply create a small malfunction. The latter usually takes the form of a black screen, followed by a loading icon, before the phone returns to the locked screen. Nothing too serious then.

And this bug, how does it work ? To recreate the bug in question, you just have to enter a sequence of four characters, namely ” “”:: “, and this, directly in the search bar of the application library or in Spotlight. As mentioned above, this will create a small malfunction of the interface, which results in a form of mini-crash of a small second.

For our part, we were able to observe the presence of the bug on an iPhone 15 Pro powered by iOS 17.6.1, the latest version of Apple's ecosystem. The bug is also present on iOS 18, the beta version of which is currently running on many iPhones, with the final version expected in the coming weeks. Remember that this is not a security bug, but that Apple could well correct the situation via a future iOS update.

Finally, remember that Apple increased the price of all its iPhones in France at the beginning of July, without anyone really understanding why. Rates still in effect today, and which only concern France.

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