Earlier this week a bug was discovered that centered around a string of text that when received via a message would cause your iPhone Springboard to crash and the Messages app to crash continuously. At the time, Apple said it was aware of the bug and working to push an update to fix it. In the meantime however, the company tonight has published an official support document with a few suggestions on how to temporarily work around the issue.
We highlighted these fixes already when the bug first emerged, but this support document from Apple, first spotted by iDownloadblog, confirms that they should work for most users. Some readers, however, have informed us that none of the current workarounds fully solve the issue for them. Again, the bug centers around a certain string of text, as seen in the screenshot above, that causes your iPhone to crash when received and the Messages app to crash.
Below are the workarounds Apple suggests to solve the issue of the crashing Messages app:
- Ask Siri to “read unread messages.”
- Use Siri to reply to the malicious message. After you reply, you’ll be able to open Messages again.
- In Messages, swipe left to delete the entire thread. Or tap and hold the malicious message, tap More, and delete the message from the thread.
In addition to offering workarounds for the issue, the support document also notes that Apple is aware of the issue and is working to make a software update available, similar to the statement the company provided us earlier this week. “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,” the company wrote on the support page.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
HMM GOOD
Came on, Apple, iOS 8.4 DP is completely all right!
I’m running the DP. my phone still crashes…
Thank you! Wow, I think that’s the first time I’ve used Siri for something critical.
Reblogged this on Garcia Talks about the How To's of the iPhone,iPad,MacBook & Apple Products for Non-Technical Users and commented:
Hello Everyone,
Here’s a temporary cure for the bug with crashing messages. According to 9to5MAC, Apple is still working on solving the problem completely.
Shalom,
Pat Garcia
what about people on an iPad 2? they have iOS 8.3 but no siri
I tried to this it did work for me.
What finally worked was
Try this
Settings > Messages > keep messages, select 30 days. Press delete when it says that any messages before 30 will be deleted ( In this way, that defecting messages will also be deleted)
Then, go to settings > general > date & time and uncheck set automatically. Them Manually change the date to one at least 31 days later. An easy way is to change the day to 2016.
I also had to reset the carrier settings
After that, launch messages
Where is the anger and disappointment? This is a pretty serious bug and Apple has yet to issue an update that fixes it. Some people’s messages app was completely shut down and they had to go through Photos to fix it. This fix doesn’t work for everyone. I’m a multi-Apple device owner (not a fanboy though) and I’m dissapointed in the slow response from Apple.
It’s a unicode bug — it’s pretty stupid, but what are they supposed to do?
For a bug so bad to cancel out their planned iOS release cycle and force them to do an early release I would have to think this one comes pretty close to getting them to do that, but more than likely not close enough. There are ways around it as mentioned, plus you can tell the person who sends you this to stop being a dickhead…Anyway, it’s probably already fixed, they are just waiting for other stuff to be done to release the whole shebang.
lol what happened to not showing the string?
Can’t really do much with an image of the string, hard to recreate on its own. We won’t paste the actual code, though.
This bug does *not* cause the iPhone to reboot. It causes the app displaying the text to crash. If it is a notification, SpringBoard crashes and an apple logo appears until SpringBoard is finished automatically relaunching.
But the iPhone definitely does not reboot.
Actually the bug can cause a “Respring” of the Apple dashboard (The apple logo shows on a blank screen). Not technically a “reboot” but it looks very similar.
The “dashboard” app is SpringBoard.
You can tell that the device isn’t rebooting because an iPhone has *never* booted that quickly. Ever.
This really doesn’t fix a lot. Here’s a video of 10 things you can do with this little unicode bug:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBOzI_jfGb8
I really do hope a proper fix comes soon.
Can someone copy and paste it? I know I’m crazy but I need to get back at my frenemy
i simply deleted the whole msg, went to my settings and turned the imsg off and then back on…has worked just fine since.
This just affected my macbook air. As soon as I clicked the message, the screen halted for a few seconds and then I was dumped to the login screen. All users were logged off. When I logged back on, things were working as before, so it logged me out but didn’t shut down my session.
No chance to get into my iphone or even unlocking through the slide. After receiving the message, there is a continuous reboot again and again and again. Hard reboot doesent help.
me toooooooo i have this shiitt…. its not stopping restartttt
I received it but but simply deleted the message and my texting app is still crashing. Seriously pissing me off
so has anyone experienced a crash that didn’t allow a reboot? basically the phone’s gone dark? it’s a 5c