Unsurprisingly, iPhone Messages bug crashes iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, WhatsApp, Twitter and Snapchat

The iPhone bug that causes Messages to crash and forces a reboot when a certain string of text is received also breaks Twitter and Snapchat, it has been found. If the same message is received by one of these apps and notifications are enabled, it has exactly the same affect.

Apple has already published a workaround for the issue while it prepares a software update that will fix it for good, and those with a jailbroken iOS device can install a tweak that will prevent the Messages app from crashing when the “malicious text” is received.

That would explain why third-party apps that deal with messages, like Twitter and Snapchat, were affected as they tap into Apple’s CoreText engine to manage strings of text and layouts.

I’m just theorizing here, but if there’s a bug in the CoreText framework causing the above string to decode to an infinitely repeating message, any app which deals with the offending message would eat up all the available RAM, causing your iPhone to respring.

The Guardian writes that the above string breaks Snapchat text chat. It can also be sent via Twitter direct messages or mentions, in which case your Twitter client will go into memory overflow and crash your device.

“The bug, which causes Apple’s text handling system to choke on certain characters from Arabic, Marathi and Chinese and crashes the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Mac, also affects apps running on iOS,” reads the article.

In the case of iOS Messages, the bug causes the app to repeatedly crash, or you may find yourself stuck in the conversation.

Yesterday, Apple updated its support document offering a simple workaround to temporarily circumvent the issue.

“Apple is aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update,” wrote the firm, without giving a time frame for any such fix.

You can use these steps to re-open the Messages app after the crash, which involves telling Siri to read your messages and then asking her to send a reply to the malicious message.

Step 1: Press and hold the Home button to invoke Siri. Once activated, ask Siri to “read unread messages.”

Step 2: Siri will sort of read the message (it is impossible for it to actually speak it in proper English), and then it will ask if you want to reply to the message. Say yes.

Step 3: Say anything. The actual content of the reply doesn’t matter. What matters is sending a message.

Step 4: Once the reply has been sent, you should be able to open the Messages app. From there, swipe to delete the entire conversation containing the string of characters, or tap and hold on the malicious message, tap More, and then delete the message from the conversation.

[via TechRadar]