A New Character Bug on iPhone Has Been Discovered, Causing Devices to Crash

A new character bug plaguing iPhones and iPad has been discovered. According to new reports, it only takes four characters to be typed in a specific manner to crash your device.

According to TechCrunch, typing “”:: can cause your iPhone or iPad to crash. These specific characters are reported to affect what’s known as the Springboard. It’s been verified that these four characters when typed into the Search bar of the Setting app can affect your device.

Additionally, users are claiming that typing “”:: into the App Library search bar after scrapping to the right from the Home screen can also crash the Springboard. Other users report that to cause the Springboard to crash, you actually only need to type “”: with any additional character afterwards.

When the crash occurs, the iPhone or iPad reloads to its lock screen. In other tests by TechCrunch, the bug flashes the screen black for a second or two.

Thankfully, this bug likely won’t cause users any issues unless they go out of their way to manually type these characters in themselves. As long as you can refrain from typing “”:: into the very specific search bars, there’s no cause for concern. Additionally, it doesn’t sound as if this bug is a security risk for users either.

As of the time of writing, Apple has yet to comment on the matter. If anything, this bug will likely get patched out in a future software update.