Do not type these four secret characters on your iPhone, or else your phone might get crushed. iPhone and iPad are crashing repeatedly due to one bug that recently founded by a researcher.
You only need four characters to trigger this bug. On Wednesday, a security researcher on Mastodon founded that typing these “”:: characters, could crash the Apple iphone user interface called Springboard.
The mobile technician also verified that when typing those characters into the Search bar in the iPhone Settings app, crashes Springboard. Also, slide your finger to the right on the home screen and type them in the application library search bar.
As others noted, all that’s needed is actually “”: and any other character. Triggering this problem briefly crashes Springboard, then reloads to your phone lock screen. In other tests, the bug flashed the display black for a second.
Apple did not response to it when researchers reached them. Experts think the bug will not appear to be a security and privacy issue.
TechCrunch, Cnet, and other top tech giants also point out this bug.
9to5Mac also tested this bug on multiple iPhones with the latest version of iOS 17 and multiple older iOS versions. They noticed that typing these characters causes Springboard as a result of the iPhone Home Display interface crashing and “soft” rebooting. Testing these characters with the latest iOS 18 causes Springboard does not fully crash but Spotlight Search to freeze very briefly.
However, there is no evidence or announcement yet to suggest that anyone other than the iOS device user manually typing characters could trigger this iPhone bug. Unlike a bug that was seen in 2020 that triggered an error with a certain set of characters. The tweet crashed the Twitter app of any user who saw it.
