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.
