iOS bug causes iPhone to crash when entering these 4 characters

Every once in a while, a strange text string error appears in iOS that can cause your iPhone to crash with just a few characters. 

As TechCrunch points out, you can actually just type '': followed by any fourth character to cause the problem. The researchers further explained that this is not a security issue and "there is no evidence that anyone other than the iOS device owner manually entering these characters could cause this error" .

9to5Mac tested this error on multiple iPhones and multiple iOS versions. With the latest version of iOS 17, entering these characters causes Springboard - the iPhone's home screen interface - to crash and restart.

Typing these characters on iOS 18 and iOS 18.1 caused Spotlight Search to crash for a very short time, but Springboard did not crash completely.

This issue only affects entering Spotlight Search from the iPhone's home screen or the App Library search bar.

This isn't the first time a text string error like this has affected iPhones. Perhaps most notable was the "Effective Power" bug in 2015 that caused the Messages app to crash and the iPhone to restart when a specific message was received. This is a more serious problem because other people can send you messages and keep crashing your iPhone.

Apple has yet to comment on this week's findings, but the company is usually pretty quick to fix problems like this with an iOS update. And of course, not everyone intentionally types "":: on a regular basis.

Marvin Fry

Update 22 August 2024